PROBLEMS   OF  THE   PLAYWRIGHT 


By  CLAYTON  HAMILTON 

Uniform  with  thit  Volume 


THE  THEORY  OF  THE  THEATRE 
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HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 

NBW  YORK 


PROBLEMS    OF   THE 
PLAYWRIGHT 


.......  R  ALIFORNEI 

BY 


CLAYTON    HAMILTON 

MEMBER  OF  THE  NATIONAL  INSTITUTE  OF  ARTS  AND  LETTERS 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 
1917 


COPTBISHT,  1917, 
BT 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


Published  October,  1917 


TO 

Milliam  Brcber 

GREETINGS    OVERSEAS 


2040536 


PREFACE 

THIS  book  is  a  companion  volume  to  THE  THEORY  OF 
THE  THEATRE  and  STUDIES  IN  STAGECRAFT,  and  should, 
if  possible,  be  read  in  association  with  its  predecessors 
in  the  series. 

We  are  living  in  the  midst  of  a  great  period  of  the 
history  of  the  drama — perhaps  the  very  greatest  that 
the  world  has  ever  seen;  but  the  general  theatre-going 
and  play-reading  public  is  only  gradually  developing  a 
consciousness  of  this  astounding  fact.  The  reason  is 
not  difficult  to  define.  In  the  evolution  of  any  art, 
creation  always  precedes  criticism,  because  criticism  is 
merely  an  analysis  of  what  has  been  created ;  and,  since 
the  contemporary  drama  began  to  bourgeon  only  thirty 
years  ago,  it  is  not  surprising  that  contemporary  criti- 
cism is  only  now  beginning  to  interpret  it.  A  few  books 
by  pioneers  have  been  before  the  public  for  half  a  dozen 
or  a  dozen  years,  to  plead,  like  lone  voices  in  an  almost 
empty  auditorium,  for  adequate  appreciation  of  the 
modern  drama ;  but  it  was  not  until  very  recently  that 
a  sturdy  group  of  books  has  been  prepared  to  sally 
forth,  shoulder  to  shoulder,  like  an  army  with  banners, 
to  conquer  the  credence  of  the  public  in  the  new  era  of 
great  drama  that  is  now  contributing  a  glory  to  the 
theatre  of  the  world. 

Those  of  us  who  were  in  college  from  fifteen  to 
twenty  years  ago  will  remember  that  we  were  taught 


viii  PREFACE 

that  there  were  four  great  periods  in  the  history  of 
the  drama — the  Greek  period  of  Sophocles,  the  Spanish 
period  of  Calderon,  the  English  period  of  Shakespeare, 
and  the  French  period  of  Moliere.  We  were  led  to  re- 
gard the  drama  as  an  art  that  had  been  dead  for  several 
centuries.  Our  professors  were  still  diffident  of  Ibsen ; 
and  they  would  have  considered  it  a  sacrilege  against 
the  dignity  of  scholarship  to  advise  us  to  study  the 
works  of  such  untested  dramatists  as  Hauptmann  and 
Pinero  and  Brieux.  In  half  a  generation,  this  attitude 
toward  the  contemporary  drama  has  been  rendered 
obsolete.  It  is  no  longer  considered  necessary,  as  a 
requirement  for  a  baccalaureate  diploma,  to  read  John 
Ford  in  preference  to  Maurice  Maeterlinck.  The  most 
popular  courses  in  our  colleges  to-day  are  courses  in 
the  contemporary  drama ;  and  the  study  has  been  taken 
up  by  every  woman's  club  and  literary  circle  in  the  land. 
So  swift  has  been  this  new  development  that  a  large 
public,  crying  out  for  instruction,  has  outstripped  the 
available  supply  of  teachers ;  and,  for  the  present,  it 
has  become  the  duty  of  every  one  who  knows  this  or 
that  concerning  the  contemporary  drama  to  write  a 
book  about  it  and  pass  his  knowledge  on,  at  second 
hand,  to  the  many  who  are  eager  to  receive  it.  It  is 
comforting  to  note  that  this  demand,  at  last,  is  being 
dealt  with.  So  many  books  about  the  current  drama 
are,  at  present,  being  issued  in  rapid  succession  from 
the  press  that,  in  another  year  or  two,  the  most  con- 
servative of  readers  will  no  longer  be  permitted  to  plead 
ignorance  as  an  excuse  for  failing  to  appreciate  the 
artistic  triumphs  of  the  theatre  of  to-day. 


PREFACE  ix 

But  this  new  criticism  of  a  new  creation  has  not  as 
yet  attained  its  classic  stage.  Sophocles  achieved  his 
Aristotle ;  but  our  great  contemporary  drama  still 
awaits  a  great  dramatic  critic.  The  task  of  criticism 
is  more  difficult  to-day  than  it  has  ever  been  before. 
For  one  thing,  the  drama  has  become,  for  the  first  time, 
cosmopolitan.  In  interpreting  the  periods  of  Sophocles, 
Calderon,  Shakespeare,  and  Moliere,  the  critic  could 
confine  his  attention,  in  each  instance,  to  a  single 
nationality.  But  worthy  contributions  to  the  con- 
temporary drama  have  been  made  by  nations  so  diverse 
as  Scandinavia,  Russia,  Germany,  Austria,  France, 
Belgium,  Holland,  Hungary,  Italy,  Spain,  England, 
and  America.  Aristotle  could  actually  see  and  study 
at  first  hand  all  the  plays  that  were  existent  in  his 
world;  but,  on  the  same  terms,  no  modern  critic  could 
possibly  evaluate  the  best  dramatic  productions  of 
the  last  thirty  years. 

For  another  thing,  the  creations  of  the  contempo- 
rary period  have  been  more  diverse  in  content,  in  pur- 
pose, and  in  method,  than  the  creations  of  any  of  the 
other  great  periods  that  have  been  enumerated.  The 
Elizabethan  period  endured  for  half  a  century — from 
1590  to  1640,  let  us  say;  but  all  the  plays  presented 
in  this  period  display  a  family  resemblance  to  each 
other.  The  difference  between  Shakespeare  and  Web- 
ster and  Fletcher  "  and  the  rest "  [to  quote  a  phrase 
from  the  diary  of  Philip  Henslowe]  is  a  difference 
merely  of  degree,  and  not  at  all  of  kind.  Similarly  [to 
take  another  period]  the  art  of  ^Eschylus,  Sophocles, 
and  Euripides  was  the  same  art,  in  principle  and 


x  PREFACE 

method.  Such  periods  can  be  summed  up  easily  by  a 
critic  who,  like  Aristotle,  is  endowed  with  eyes  to  see. 
But  it  is  much  more  difficult  to  interpret  a  brief  period 
of  thirty  years  that  discloses  such  diverse  products  as 
The  Weavers,  Chantecler,  The  Thunderbolt,  The  Blue 
Bird,  Hindle  Wakes,  The  Dream  Play,  The  Red 
Robe,  The  Cherry  Orchard,  and  Sumurun.  All  of 
these  are  great  works ;  but  they  show  no  relation 
to  each  other  that  is  immediately  recognizable. 
They  differ  not  merely  in  degree,  but  also  in  kind; 
and  the  critic  who  endeavors  to  interpret  all  of 
them  must  induce  a  separate  set  of  principles  for 
each. 

For  still  another  thing,  a  development  of  the  drama 
in  recent  years  toward  naturalism  has  been  accom- 
panied by  a  simultaneous  development  of  the  theatre 
toward  fantastical  romance;  so  that  the  contemporary 
critic  is  required  to  deal  synchronously  with  such 
utterly  different  undertakings  as  those  of  Elizabeth 
Baker  and  Gordon  Craig — or  as  those  of  the  Granville 
Barker  who  wrote  The  Madras  House  and  the  Granville 
Barker  who  produced  The  Man  Who  Married  a  Dumb 
Wife.  Criticism  of  so  chaotic  and  diverse  a  period  must 
necessarily  appear,  for  the  present  at  least,  chaotic 
and  diverse.  The  same  standard  that  is  used  in  judg- 
ing Marlowe  may  be  used  in  judging  Shirley;  but  it 
would  manifestly  be  unfair  to  apply  the  same  standard 
in  judging  Hedda  Gabler  and  Cyrano  de  Bergerac.  It 
should  be,  I  think,  apparent  to  any  reasonable  mind 
that  the  time  has  not  yet  come  for  coherent  and  com- 
plete and  final  criticism  of  that  superb  and  varied 


PREFACE 


XI 


efflorescence  of  the  drama  in  the  very  midst  of  which 
we  dwell. 

The  most  that  can  be  accomplished  by  dramatic 
critics  at  the  present  time  is  to  interpret  various  trends 
and  tendencies  in  and  for  themselves.  Some  future 
critic,  looking  back  from  a  distance  of  a  century  or 
more,  may  be  able  to  include  Shaw  and  Synge  and 
Sudermann  and  Maeterlinck  in  a  single  stroke  of  the 
eye;  but  for  the  present  it  seems  wiser  to  approach 
these  masters  separately,  in  different  moods  and  with 
different  standards  of  appreciation.  Brieux  and  Rein- 
hardt,  Stanley  Houghton  and  Gordon  Craig,  D'Annun- 
zio  and  Pinero,  should  be  treated  as  the  subjects  of 
different  studies  in  stagecraft.  For  this  reason,  a 
multiplication  of  critical  studies  of  the  contemporary 
drama  is  greatly  to  be  desired.  Each  commentator 
should  contrive  to  teach  us  something  worthy  of  remem- 
brance regarding  that  particular  phase  of  the  vast, 
kaleidoscopic  spectacle  which  has  chiefly  attracted  his 
attention.  But  no  single  critic,  under  these  conditions, 
can  be  readily  accepted  as  a  final  and  complete  author- 
ity on  every  aspect  of  so  multifarious  a  phenomenon 
as  the  contemporary  drama. 

The  present  volume  [which  is  to  be  regarded  as  a 
sort  of  suffix  to  THE  THEORY  OF  THE  THEATRE  and 
STUDIES  IN  STAGECRAFT]  is  intended  merely  as  a  minor 
contribution  to  an  instant  need.  In  this  book,  the 
kaleidoscopic  field  of  the  contemporary  drama  is  con- 
sidered from  various  points  of  view, — that  of  the  critic, 
the  dramatist,  the  stage-director,  the  scenic  artist,  the 
manager,  and  the  theatre-going  public. 


xii  PREFACE 

Most  of  the  studies  included  in  this  volume  have 
appeared,  in  earlier  versions,  in  various  magazines, — 
The  Bookman,  Vogue,  Good  Housekeeping,  and  The 
Theatre.  To  the  proprietors  of  these  publications  I 
am  indebted  for  the  privilege  of  quoting  from  my  con- 
tributions to  their  pages.  It  is  scarcely  necessary  to 
state  that  these  studies  have  been  revised  and  rear- 
ranged and,  in  many  passages,  entirely  rewritten. 

In  the  process  of  preparing  the  present  volume  for 
the  press,  I  have  encountered  certain  passages  of 
repetition  which  I  have  decided  not  to  delete,  because  of 
the  advisability  of  adding  emphasis  to  an  important 
point  by  iteration;  and  I  have  encountered  a  few 
other  passages  which  seem,  at  first  sight,  to  contradict 
each  other.  But,  in  every  instance  of  apparent  contra- 
diction, I  have  discovered  that  what  I  have  said  on  the 
one  side  and  the  other  is  equally  true,  according  to  the 
point  of  view.  I  have  decided,  therefore,  not  to  strive 
for  that  foolish  consistency  which  is  the  hobgoblin  of 
little  minds.  What  I  have  desired  is,  rather,  to  main- 
tain the  free  play  of  an  unprejudiced,  receptive  mind 
over  the  entire  panorama  of  the  contemporary  stage. 

C.  H. 

NEW  YORK  CITY:  1917. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PA9B 

PREFACE rii 

I    CONTRAST  IN  THE  DRAMA 1 

II     BUILDING  A  PLAY  BACKWARD 9 

III  THE  POINT  OF  VIEW 25 

IV  SURPRISE  IN  THE  DRAMA 31 

V  THE  TROUBLESOME  LAST  ACT   .       .       .       .       .  38 

VI    STRATEGY  AND  TACTICS 46 

VII    PROPORTION  IN  THE  DRAMA 53 

VIII    HARMONY  IN  PRESENTATION 58 

IX    HIGH  COMEDY  IN  AMERICA 64 

X  THE  GEORGE  M.  COHAN  SCHOOL  OF  PLAYWRIGHTS  70 

XI  YOUTH  AND  AGE  IN  THE  DRAMA     .       .       .       .  77 

XII  YVETTE   GUILBERT — PREMIERE   DlSEUSE    ...  89 

XIII  THE  LOVELINESS  OF  LITTLE  THINGS       ...  95 

XIV  THE  MAGIC  OF  MR.  CHESTERTON    ....  100 
XV    MIDDLE  CLASS  OPINION 107 

XVI  CRITICISM  AND  CREATION  IN  THE  DRAMA     .       .  116 

XVII     A  Kiss  FOR  CINDERELLA 128 

XVIII  DRAMATIC  TALENT  AND  THEATRICAL  TALENT       .  138 

XIX    STEVENSON  ON  THE  STAGE 160 

XX  THE  PLAYS  OF  LORD  DUNSANY        .'..'.       .       .  175 

XXI    THE  MOOD  OF  MAETERLINCK 197 

XXII    EURIPIDES  IN  NEW  YORK 202 

XXIII  ROMANCE  AND  REALISM  IN  THE  DRAMA       .       .  211 

XXIV  SCENIC  SETTINGS  IN  AMERICA 224 

XXV    THE  NEW  STAGECRAFT 233 

XXVI  THE  LONG  RUN  IN  THE  THEATRE    ....  248 

XXVII  THE  NON-COMMERCIAL  DRAMA          ....  255 

XXVIII  THE  PUBLIC  AND  THE  THEATRE       ....  260 

XXIX  A  DEMOCRATIC  INSURRECTION  IN  THE  THEATRE  .  275 

XXX     LITERATURE  AND  THE  DRAMA 292 

XXXI  A  SCHEME  FOR  A  STOCK  COMPANY  ....  300 

XXXII  WHAT  Is  WRONG  WITH  THE  AMERICAN  DRAMA?  312 

INDEX  329 


PROBLEMS   OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 


PROBLEMS  OF  THE 
PLAYWRIGHT 

i 

CONTRAST  IN  THE  DRAMA 

IN  this  time  of  the  tottering  of  definitions,  it  is 
desirable  that  the  dramatic  critic,  in  the  interest  of 
future  playwrights,  should  seek  some  certain  element 
of  narrative  that  may  be  accepted  as  essential  to  suc- 
cess upon  the  stage.  In  view  of  the  fact  that  several 
of  the  younger  realistic  writers  of  Great  Britain  have 
successfully  evaded  the  famous  assertion  of  the  late 
Ferdinand  Brunetiere  that  the  essential  element  of 
drama  is  a  struggle  between  human  wills,  it  appears 
to  be  necessary  to  agree  with  Mr.  William  Archer  that 
the  Brunetiere  formula  can  no  longer  be  accepted  as  a 
definition  of  the  drama. 

The  potency  of  this  attack  upon  a  theory  which  for 
twenty  years  has  been  regarded  as  an  axiom  must  not 
be  over-estimated.  Not  even  the  author  of  The  Great 
Adventure — from  which  any  positive  assertion  of  the 
human  will  has  been  carefully  excluded — would  deny 
that  the  narrative  pattern  praised  in  unexceptionable 
terms  by  Brunetiere  is  the  one  pattern  which  is  most 
likely  to  interest  an  audience  assembled  in  a  theatre,  or 
that  at  least  nine-tenths  of  all  the  acknowledged  master- 
pieces of  the  drama,  both  in  the  past  and  in  the  present, 


2         PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

will  be  found  upon  examination  to  incorporate  some 
conflict  between  human  wills.  Exceptions — according 
to  the  Latin  proverb — test  a  rule;  but  they  do  not 
necessarily  prove  that,  as  a  rule,  it  has  lost  its  validity. 
In  shifting  our  critical  position,  we  are  merely  admit- 
ting that  the  element  of  conflict  is  not  essential  to  the 
drama ;  it  is  far  from  our  intention  to  suggest  that,  in 
the  vast  majority  of  cases,  this  element  is  not  desirable. 

But  even  to  admit  that  an  element  which  was  formerly 
considered  as  essential  can  now  be  regarded  only  as 
advantageous  is  to  feel  ourselves  somewhat  in  the  posi- 
tion of  mariners  whose  ship  has  sunk  beneath  them. 
This  position  is  pertinently  indicated  by  the  familiar 
phrase  "  at  sea."  It  is  always  disconcerting  to  re- 
nounce a  seeming  certainty ;  and  the  normal  mind  seeks 
ever  to  erect  some  other  image  to  replace  an  idol  that  is 
overthrown.  There  is  a  world  of  meaning  in  the  tradi- 
tional announcement,  "  The  king  is  dead ;  long  live  the 
king !  "  When  definitions  die,  we  must  immediately  seek 
new  definitions  to  succeed  them. 

This  necessity  was  felt  by  Mr.  Archer  when  he  dealt 
his  gentle  death-blow  to  the  theory  that  conflict  is 
essential  to  the  drama.  He  proceeded  at  once  to  pre- 
sent a  new  pretender  to  the  vacant  throne.  The  follow- 
ing sentences,  which  are  quoted  from  page  36  of  Mr. 
Archer's  Play-Making,  define  his  new  position: — 
"  What,  then,  is  the  essence  of  drama,  if  conflict  be  not 
it?  What  is  the  common  quality  of  themes,  scenes, 
and  incidents,  which  we  recognize  as  specifically  dra- 
matic? Perhaps  we  shall  scarcely  come  nearer  to  a 
helpful  definition  than  if  we  say  that  the  essence  of 


CONTRAST  IN  THE  DRAMA  3 

drama  is  crisis.  A  play  is  a  more  or  less  rapidly- 
developing  crisis  in  destiny  or  circumstance,  and  a 
dramatic  scene  is  a  crisis  within  a  crisis,  clearly  fur- 
thering the  ultimate  event.  The  drama  may  be  called 
the  art  of  crises,  as  fiction  is  the  art  of  gradual  develop- 
ments." 

This  theory  of  Mr.  Archer's  affords  us  at  least  a 
floating  spar  to  cling  to,  in  the  midst  of  the  sea  of 
uncertainty  into  which  we  have  disturbingly  been 
dropped.  It  is  undeniable  that  the  drama  tends  to 
treat  life  more  crisply  and  succinctly  than  the  novel, 
both  because  of  the  physical  limitations  of  the  theatre 
and  because  of  the  psychological  demands  of  the  actors 
and  the  audience.  One  way  of  attaining  this  crispness 
and  succinctness  is  to  catch  life  at  a  crisis  and  to 
exhibit  the  culminating  points — or,  as  Mr.  Archer  says 
in  a  later  passage,  "  the  interesting  culminations  " — of 
the  destinies  of  the  characters  concerned.  But  is  this 
the  only  way?  No  one  would  venture  to  deny  that  Mr. 
Archer's  formula  applies  to  at  least  nine-tenths  of  all 
the  acknowledged  masterpieces  of  the  drama;  but  so 
did  the  formula  of  Brunetiere.  It  is  obviously  advan- 
tageous for  the  drama  to  catch  life  at  a  crisis;  but  is 
it  absolutely  necessary?  If  we  can  find  as  many  excep- 
tions to  Mr.  Archer's  rule  as  Mr.  Archer  found  to 
Brunetiere's,  we  shall  be  compelled  to  decide  that  the 
element  of  crisis  is  no  more  essential  to  the  drama  than 
the  element  of  conflict. 

Let  us  now  ask  Mr.  Archer  if  he  can  find  any  crisis  in 
Lady  Gregory's  one-act  comedy  entitled  The  Work- 
house Ward?  This  dialogue  between  two  beggars  lying 


4         PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

in  adjacent  beds  attains  that  crispness  and  succinct- 
ness which  is  advocated  by  the  critic,  without  exhibit- 
ing a  crisis  in  either  of  their  lives.  The  whole  point 
of  the  play  is  that  we  leave  the  beggars  precisely  in  the 
same  position  in  which  we  found  them.  Yet  this  comedy 
is  undeniably  dramatic.  It  has  been  acted  successfully 
in  Ireland  and  England  and  America,  and  has  proved 
itself,  in  all  three  countries,  one  of  the  most  popular 
pieces  in  the  repertory  of  the  Abbey  Theatre  Players. 
Would  Mr.  Archer  maintain  that  The  Great  Adventure 
exhibits  "  a  more  or  less  rapidly-developing  crisis  in 
destiny  or  circumstance,"  or  that  any  of  the  eight 
scenes  of  this  comedy,  except  the  very  first,  can  be 
regarded  as  "  a  crisis  within  a  crisis,  clearly  furthering 
the  ultimate  event?  "  Is  there  any  crisis  in  The  Madras 
House  or  in  The  Pigeon?  Or,  to  go  back  to  Shake- 
speare, would  Mr.  Archer  attempt  to  define  as  "  a  crisis 
within  a  crisis  "  such  a  passage  as  Act  V,  Scene  1  of 
The  Merchant  of  Venice,  in  which  Lorenzo  and  Jessica 
discourse  most  eloquent  music  underneath  the  moon? 
Is  there  any  crisis  in  the  scenes  between  Orlando  and 
Rosalind  in  the  Forest  of  Arden? 

To  defend  the  element  of  crisis  as  essential  in  such 
instances  as  these  would  necessitate  the  same  sort  of 
verbal  jugglery  that  would  be  required  to  establish  the 
element  of  conflict.  It  would  seem,  therefore,  that  Mr. 
Archer  has  not  led  us  any  nearer  to  a  certainty  than 
we  were  before.  The  friendly  spar  is  floated  from  our 
desperate  grasp  and  we  find  ourselves  once  more 
floundering  in  the  sea. 

Is  there,  after  all,  such  a  thing  as  an  essential  element 


CONTRAST  IN  THE  DRAMA  5 

of  drama?  Is  there  a  single  narrative  element  without 
which  a  dramatic  scene  cannot  succeed?  I  think  that 
there  is ;  but  I  am  willing  to  revoke  this  decision  so 
soon  as  any  writer  shall  show  me  an  exception  to  the 
rule.  It  seems  to  me  at  present  that  the  one  indispen- 
sable element  to  success  upon  the  stage  is  the  element 
of  contrast,  and  that  a  play  becomes  more  and  more 
dramatic  in  proportion  to  the  multiplicity  of  contrasts 
that  it  contains  within  itself. 

The  sole  reason  why  The  Workhouse  Ward  produces 
a  dramatic  effect  is  that  the  two  beggars  are  emphati- 
cally different  from  each  other.  The  moonlight  scene 
in  The  Merchant  of  Venice  is  interesting  on  the  stage 
because  of  the  contrast  between  the  contributions  of 
the  two  lovers  to  their  lyrical  duet.  Both  The  Pigeon 
and  The  Madras  House  derive  their  value  from  the  fact 
that  they  exhibit  a  series  of  contrasts  between  char- 
acters. The  Great  Adventure  is  dramatic  because  the 
drifting  hero  is  wonderfully  contrasted  with  the  prac- 
tical and  sensible  heroine  and  every  scene  of  the  play 
reveals  some  minor  contrast  between  antithetic  minds. 
What  is  the  dramatic  element  in  the  soliloquies  of 
Hamlet?  Do  they  not  derive  their  theatrical  effective- 
ness from  the  fact  that  they  present  a  constant  con- 
trast between  very  different  human  qualities  which,  in 
this  case,  happen  to  have  been  incorporated  in  a  single 
person?  Such  a  play  as  Every  Man  in  His  Humour 
stands  outside  the  formula  of  Brunetiere,  because  it 
exhibits  no  struggle  of  contending  wills ;  it  also  stands 
outside  the  formula  of  Mr.  Archer,  because  it  exhibits 
neither  a  crisis  nor  a  series  of  crises ;  but  it  is  a  great 


6         PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

comedy,  because  it  exhibits  an  unintermitted  series  of 
contrasts  between  mutually  foiling  personalities. 

One  of  the  most  amusing  comedies  of  recent  years 
affords  us  an  emphatic  illustration  of  the  principle  of 
contrast.  This  is  General  John  Regan,  the  first  dra- 
matic composition  by  Canon  Hannay,  of  St.  Patrick's, 
Dublin, — a  genial  Irish  gentleman  who  had  previously 
published  several  novels  signed  with  the  utterly  English 
and  very  solemn  pen-name  of  "  George  A.  Birming- 
ham." General  John  Regan  is  merely  an  amplified 
anecdote.  It  exhibits  no  conflict  of  contending  wills ; 
neither  does  it  disclose  a  crisis  in  the  life  of  any  of  the 
characters ;  but  it  is  dramatically  interesting  because 
it  sets  forth  a  series  of  delightful  contrasts  between  a 
dozen  very  different  people. 

A  rich  American  tourist  who  is  motoring  through 
Ireland  is  halted  in  the  sleepy  little  town  of  Ballymoy. 
In  order  to  give  the  inhabitants  something  to  think 
about,  he  casually  remarks  that  he  has  come  to  look 
up  the  early  records  of  the  life  of  General  John 
Regan,  the  Liberator  of  Bolivia, — the  most  renowned 
of  all  the  native  sons  of  Ballymoy.  Nobody  has  ever 
heard  of  this  mythical  hero ;  but  the  dispensary  doctor, 
a  lively-minded  man  named  Lucius  O'Grady,  plays  up  to 
the  suggestion  that  has  been  offered  by  the  stranger. 
Dr.  O'Grady  selects  a  ruined  cottage  as  the  birthplace 
of  the  famous  general,  points  out  the  town  jail  as  the 
residence  of  his  boyhood,  and  confers  upon  the  tongue- 
tied  maid-servant  of  the  village  inn  the  honorable  desig- 
nation of  Only  Surviving  Relative.  He  persuades  the 
adventurous  American  to  start  a  subscription  to  erect 


CONTRAST  IN  THE  DRAMA  7 

a  statue  to  the  Great  Liberator  in  the  market-square 
of  Ballymoy,  and  compels  all  the  leading  citizens  to 
contribute  to  the  fund. 

The  entire  second  act  is  taken  up  with  Dr.  O'Grady's 
preparations  for  the  civic  event  which  is  to  mark  the 
unveiling  of  the  monument.  This  act  exhibits  no  con- 
tention of  wills,  but  merely  a  general  contagion  of 
enthusiasm  which  overwhelms  the  wills  of  all  the  char- 
acters. It  would  merely  be  a  jugglery  of  words  to 
insist  that  this  act  exhibits  a  crisis  in  the  history  of 
Ballymoy;  and  even  Mr.  Archer  must  admit  that  it 
does  not  show  a  crisis  in  the  individual  career  of  any 
of  the  characters.  The  most  amusing  scene  of  all  is  a 
lengthy  dialogue  between  five  representative  citizens  of 
Ballymoy  who  are  gathered  round  a  table  in  the  village 
inn  to  discuss  the  details  of  the  civic  project.  What  is 
the  source  of  interest  in  this  scene?  What  is  that 
specific  quality  by  virtue  of  which  it  must  be  termed 
dramatic?  Apparently — since  all  other  explanations 
fail — it  must  be  the  delightful  contrast  between  the 
five  very  different  characters  that  take  part  in  the  con- 
versation. 

It  is  decided  in  the  second  act  to  purchase,  at  a 
reduced  price,  a  second-hand  mortuary  monument  that 
has  been  rejected  in  Dublin  by  the  relatives  of  the 
deceased ;  and  in  the  last  act  this  monument  is  unveiled 
by  the  taciturn  maid-servant,  dressed  fantastically  as  a 
fairy.  Dr.  O'Grady  has  had  the  audacity  to  invite  the 
Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ireland  to  preside  at  the  ceremony. 
This  dignitary  has  sent  down  his  aide-de-camp  to  pro- 
test against  the  hoax;  but  Dr.  O'Grady  coerces  this 


8 

very  English  and  utterly  helpless  underling  into  mak- 
ing an  address,  which  is  regarded  by  the  populace  as 
an  official  acceptance  of  the  monument. 

This  composition  is  very  rich  in  characterization 
and  unusually  humorous  in  dialogue.  Canon  Hannay 
thoroughly  knows  his  Ireland,  and  he  writes  with  that 
imaginative  glibness  which  is  always  evident  in  Irish 
humor.  His  play  successfully  defies  those  definitions  of 
the  drama  which  till  very  recently  were  held  as  axioms, 
and  it  seems  to  prove  that  the  sole  essential  to  success 
in  comedy  is  a  sufficiently  interesting  contrast  between 
characters. 


II 

BUILDING  A  PLAY  BACKWARD 

AUTHOR'S  NOTE. — The  first  section  of  the  present  chapter 
was  originally  published  in  THE  BOOKMAN  for  February, 
1914.  It  was  this  article  which  suggested  to  Mr.  Elmer  L. 
Reizenstein  the  pattern  for  his  celebrated  play,  On  Trial, — 
a  fact  which  Mr.  Reizenstein  graciously  acknowledged  in 
the  public  press  at  the  time  when  his  play  was  produced. 
The  second  section  of  the  present  chapter  was  written 
immediately  after  the  popular  triumph  of  On  Trial. 


ME.  JOHN  GALSWORTHY'S  recent  novel,  The  Dark 
Flower — which  is  a  great  work  of  art — tells  three  dis- 
tinct love-stories,  that  happen  to  the  same  hero  at 
different  periods  of  his  career.  In  order  to  avoid 
monotony,  the  author  has  employed  a  different  chrono- 
logical pattern  for  each  of  the  three  sections  of  his 
novel.  In  telling  the  first  story,  he  begins  at  the  begin- 
ning; in  telling  the  second  story,  he  begins  approxi- 
mately at  the  middle;  and  in  telling  the  third  story, 
he  begins  at  the  very  end. 

It  is  obvious  that,  so  long  as  the  novelist  exhibits 
his  events  in  a  pattern  that  reveals  their  logical  rela- 
tion, it  is  not  at  all  necessary  that  he  should  present 
them  in  chronological  succession.  In  the  first  chapter 
of  Pendennis,  the  hero  is  seventeen  years  old ;  the  second 

9 


10       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

chapter  narrates  the  marriage  of  his  parents,  and  his 
own  birth  and  boyhood ;  and  at  the  outset  of  the  third 
chapter,  he  is  only  sixteen  years  of  age.  Stories  may 
be  told  backward  through  time  as  well  as  forward. 
Thackeray  often  begins  a  chapter  with  an  event  that 
happened  one  day  and  ends  it  with  an  event  that  hap- 
pened several  days  before, — working  his  way  back- 
ward from  effects  to  causes,  instead  of  forward  from 
causes  to  effects. 

In  reviewing  any  passage  of  our  own  experience,  we 
are  more  likely  to  think  backward  from  the  last  event 
than  forward  from  the  first.  Retrogression  in  time  is, 
therefore,  a  natural  device  of  narrative;  and  it  is  not 
at  all  surprising  to  find  it  thoroughly  established  as  a 
convention  of  the  novel.  What  is  surprising,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  the  fact  that  it  has  not  yet  been  estab- 
lished as  a  convention  of  the  drama. 

I  know  of  no  play  in  which  events  have  been  exhibited 
in  a  pattern  of  reverted  time.  Of  course,  a  present 
event  is  frequently  employed  as  the  exciting  cause  of  a 
conversation  which  expounds  some  previous  event ;  and, 
in  such  instances,  the  discovery  of  what  has  happened  in 
the  past  is  often  more  important  to  the  audience  than 
the  observation  of  what  is  happening  in  the  present. 
But,  in  these  expository  passages,  the  past  events  are 
merely  talked  about  and  never  actually  acted  on  the 
stage.  In  Romance,  by  Mr.  Edward  Sheldon,  a  prologue 
in  the  present  is  followed  by  a  three-act  play  which  nar- 
rates events  that  happened  over  forty  years  before; 
but,  in  the  structure  of  the  play  itself,  there  is  no 
retrogression  in  time.  More  interesting,  from  our  pres- 


BUILDING  A  PLAY  BACKWARD          11 

ent  point  of  view,  is  the  device  of  Sir  Arthur  Pinero 
in  turning  back  the  clock  at  the  outset  of  the  third  act 
of  The  Thunderbolt.  At  the  end  of  the  second  act,  in 
the  house  of  Thaddeus  Mortimore,  a  servant  arrives 
with  a  message  from  his  brother  James.  The  third  act, 
in  the  house  of  James  Mortimore,  overlaps  the  second 
act  in  time;  and  an  entire  scene  is  acted  out  before 
the  servant  is  instructed  to  set  out  with  the  message  for 
Thaddeus.  This  simple  expedient,  which  is  used  in 
nearly  every  novel,  seemed  exceedingly  surprising  in 
the  drama;  but  there  can  be  no  question  that,  in  The 
Thunderbolt,  its  employment  was  both  useful  and  suc- 
cessful. 

Might  it  not  be  interesting  to  go  a  step  further  and 
build  an  entire  drama  backward, — to  construct  a  three- 
act  play,  for  instance,  in  which  the  first  act  should 
happen  in  the  autumn,  the  second  act  in  the  preceding 
summer,  and  the  third  act  in  the  previous  spring?  Let 
us  imagine  a  tragedy,  for  instance,  in  which,  with  no 
preliminary  exposition,  a  murder  or  a  suicide  is  acted 
out  in  the  initial  act.  This  would  naturally  awaken 
in  the  audience  a  desire  to  understand  the  motives  which 
had  culminated  in  the  crime.  Then,  in  the  second  act, 
we  could  exhibit  the  crucial  event  which  had  made 
the  murder  or  the  suicide  inevitable.  Again,  the  audi- 
ence would  be  stimulated  to  think  backward  from  effects 
to  causes  and  to  wonder  what  had  brought  this  crucial 
event  about.  Lastly,  in  the  third  act,  several  previous 
events  could  be  displayed,  which  would  finally  clear 
up  the  mystery  by  expounding  the  initiation  of  the 
narrative. 


12       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

Or,  to  invent  an  example  in  the  mood  of  comedy, 
let  us  imagine  a  first  act  which  should  exhibit  the  hope- 
lessly unhappy  home  life  of  a  kindly  and  reasonable  man 
who  is  married  to  a  peevish  and  unreasonable  woman. 
The  heroine  is  pretty,  let  us  say,  and  there  are  some 
seeds  of  poetry  in  her  nature  that  flower  every  now 
and  then  to  momentary  loveliness.  But,  like  many 
people  who  are  not  incapable  of  poetry,  she  abandons 
herself  utterly  to  the  emotion  of  the  moment ;  and 
whenever  this  emotion  is  not  pleasant,  she  makes  life 
miserable  for  anybody  who  is  near  her.  Because  she 
is  pretty,  she  has  always  been  spoiled.  She  is  selfish, 
she  is  jealous,  she  is  vain;  and  whenever  these  ignoble 
motives  are  in  any  slight  degree  assailed,  she  breaks 
out  into  a  violent  fit  of  temper.  Just  now,  in  response 
to  an  insistent  question,  her  husband  has  told  her  that 
she  looks  better  in  pink  than  in  blue.  The  heroine, 
whose  instinct  is  antagonistic,  at  once  prefers  blue; 
she  does  not  see  why  her  husband,  if  he  loves  her — he 
said  he  loved  her — should  not  admit  that  she  would 
look  well  in  anything;  and  she  proceeds  to  kick  the 
furniture.  The  husband  seeks  refuge  in  reading  The 
Wind  in  the  Willows — whereupon  she  knocks  the  book 
out  of  his  hand.  Very  gently  he  remarks :  "  You 
didn't  seem  like  this,  dear,  before  we  were  married." 
And  on  that  backward-looking  line  the  curtain  falls. 

The  second  act  shows  them  in  their  courtship,  two 
years  before.  The  romance  of  falling  in  love  has 
brought  out  all  the  lyric  loveliness  that  is  latent  in  the 
complex  nature  of  the  heroine.  Her  prospective  hus- 
band sees  her  at  her  best,  and  only  at  her  best.  Her 


BUILDING  A  PLAY  BACKWARD          13 

family  could  tell  him  that  she  is  hard  to  live  with; 
but — glad  enough  to  get  her  married — they  refrain 
from  doing  so.  Besides,  her  brother  is  a  gentleman. 
The  hero  is  his  friend:  but  what  can  a  decent  fellow 
do  in  such  a  dilemma?  The  heroine  seems  lovable  in- 
deed, when  she  graciously  accepts  a  large  bouquet  of 
orchids,  and  reads  aloud  by  golden  lamp-light  the 
forlorn  and  lovely  little  lyrics  of  Christina  Rossetti. 
The  hero  proposes  marriage :  is  accepted :  and  the  cur- 
tain falls. — Would  not  this  little  comedy  gain  greatly 
in  ironic  emphasis  by  being  acted  backward  in  time 
instead  of  forward?  The  question,  "What  happened 
before  ?  ",  is  fully  as  suspensive  as  the  question,  "  What 
happens  next?":  and,  in  this  instance,  it  is  by  far  the 
more  important  question  of  the  two. 

Though  novels  are  frequently  narrated  in  a  pattern 
of  reverted  time,  this  proposal  to  build  a  play  back- 
ward may  seem  so  revolutionary  that  most  technicians 
would  dismiss  it  as  impossible.  But,  why?  The  answer, 
of  course,  is  obvious ;  but  I  am  not  at  all  sure  that  it  is 
final.  To  follow  a  narrative  forward,  from  cause  to 
effect,  requires  a  synthetic  exercise  of  mind;  and  to 
follow  it  backward,  from  effect  to  cause,  requires  an 
analytic  exercise.  Of  these  two  activities  of  mind,  the 
analytic  demands  a  greater  alertness  of  intelligence, 
and  a  greater  fixity  of  attention,  than  the  synthetic. 
The  collective  mind  of  a  helter-skelter  theatre  audience 
is  less  alert  and  less  attentive  than  the  individual 
mind  of  a  cultivated  reader.  Furthermore,  the  reader 
of  a  novel,  if  his  mind  becomes  muddled  by  the  juggling 
of  chronology,  may  always  suspend  his  reading  to  turn 


14       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

back  a  dozen  or  a  hundred  pages  and  reread  some 
finger-pointing  passage  whose  significance  he  has  for- 
gotten; whereas  the  auditors  of  a  play  can  never  halt 
the  performance  to  reinform  themselves  of  some  point 
that  they  have  missed.  Also,  the  theatre-going  public 
abhors  novelty,  and  never  reads  the  program.  These 
arguments — and  many  more — are  so  familiar  that  they 
need  not  be  repeated  in  detail.  Yet  something  may  now 
be  said  upon  the  other  side. 

To  students  of  the  history  of  the  drama,  one  of  the 
most  important  phenomena  of  the  last  hundred  years 
has  been  the  very  rapid  development  that  has  taken 
place,  from  decade  to  decade,  in  the  intelligence  of 
the  theatre-going  public.  The  average  audience  is  at 
present  more  alert  and  more  attentive  than  ever  before 
in  the  history  of  the  theatre.  This  point  is  evidenced 
by  the  fact  that,  throughout  the  last  century,  the  tech- 
nique of  the  prevailing  type  of  drama  has  grown 
progressively  less  synthetic  and  more  analytic.  The 
prevailing  pattern  of  the  drama  sixty  or  seventy  years 
ago  was  the  pattern  that  was  worked  out  by  Eugene 
Scribe  for  the  so-called  "  well  made  play."  Scribe 
devoted  his  first  act  to  a  very  thorough  exposition,  and 
only  at  the  curtain-fall  introduced  an  element  of 
forward-looking  action.  Then,  at  the  outset  of  the  sec- 
ond act,  he  started  his  narrative  in  motion ;  and  there- 
after he  followed  it  forward  in  time,  to  the  climax  and 
the  close.  He  never  asked  his  audience  to  think  back- 
ward. He  worked  entirely  from  causes  to  effects,  and 
centered  his  suspense  in  the  obvious  question,  "  What 
will  happen  next  ?  " 


BUILDING  A  PLAY  BACKWARD  15 

Contrast  this  utterly  synthetic  pattern — a  formula 
for  putting  two  and  two  together,  instead  of  a  formula 
for  taking  four  apart — with  the  intricately  analytic 
pattern  that  was  developed,  forty  years  later,  by  Hen- 
rik  Ibsen.  Ibsen  caught  his  story  very  late  in  its 
career,  and  revealed  the  antecedent  incidents  in  little 
gleams  of  backward-looking  dialogue.  His  method  has 
often  been  compared  with  that  of  Sophocles ;  but  there 
is  this  essential  difference, — that,  whereas  the  Athenian 
audience  always  knew  the  story  in  advance  and  there- 
fore did  not  need  an  exposition,  Ibsen  was  required  to 
expound  a  series  of  antecedent  circumstances  at  the 
same  time  that  he  was  developing  his  catastrophe.  For, 
instead  of  compacting  his  exposition  into  the  first  act — 
according  to  the  formula  of  Scribe — he  revealed  it, 
little  by  little,  throughout  the  progress  of  the  play.  In 
the  first  act,  he  expounded  only  so  much  as  the  audience 
needed  to  know  in  order  to  understand  the  second;  in 
this,  in  turn,  he  expounded  such  further  antecedent  in- 
cidents as  were  necessary  to  an  appreciation  of  the 
third  act;  and  so  on,  to  the  end  of  the  play.  In  Ros- 
mersholm,  for  instance,  he  was  still  expounding  in  the 
very  last  moments  of  the  final  act. 

This  method  requires  the  auditor  to  think  backward, 
and  therefore  presupposes  a  more  intelligent  audience 
than  the  straightforward  formula  of  Scribe.  But,  very 
recently,  that  masterly  technician,  M.  Henry  Bern- 
stein, has  gone  a  step  further  in  forcing  the  audience  to 
observe  a  story  in  retrospectory  review.  Instead  of 
scattering  his  expository  passages  throughout  the  play, 
as  Ibsen  did,  M.  Bernstein  now  compacts  them  into 


16       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

a  single  act ;  but,  with  a  startling  overturning  of  the 
formula  of  Scribe,  he  exhibits  this  act  last  instead  of 
first, — setting  it  forth  as  an  epilogue,  instead  of  as  a 
prologue,  to  the  action. 

This  new  formula  was  first  exemplified  by  M.  Bern- 
stein in  UAssaut,  which  was  acted  in  America  under  the 
title  of  The  Attack.  A  noted  politician  who  is  running 
for  office  is  accused  of  having  committed  a  crime  many 
years  before.  Either  he  is  innocent  or  he  is  guilty: 
and  this  dilemma  is  set  before  us  in  the  first  act.  The 
second  act  develops  the  presumption  that  he  is  innocent, 
until  his  innocence  is  publicly  established  by  process 
of  law.  This  is  the  climax  of  the  play.  Then,  his 
innocence  being  now  beyond  question,  the  hero  con- 
fesses to  the  heroine  that  he  was  actually  guilty.  This 
is  the  end  of  the  second  act.  What  remains  to  be  done  ? 
We  naturally  demand  an  explanation  of  the  circum- 
stances which,  so  many  years  before,  had  led  this 
admirable  hero  to  commit  that  reprehensible  crime.  In 
his  third  and  last  act,  M.  Bernstein  expounds  the  facts 
at  length  and  in  detail.  Now  we  know :  and  the  play  is 
over.  This  same  formula  is  employed  much  more  art- 
fully in  The  Secret,  a  later  and  greater  work,  which 
is  worthy  of  examination  in  detafl. 

Considered  as  a  technical  achievement,  The  Secret  is 
perhaps  the  most  wonderful  of  all  the  plays  of  M. 
Henry  Bernstein.  The  work  of  this  author  is  already 
so  well  known  in  America  that  it  is  scarcely  necessary 
to  state  that  his  plays  are  nothing  more  than  tours  de 
force.  His  plots  are  marvelously  constructed,  his  char- 
acters are  true  to  life,  his  dialogue  is  pithy  and  com- 


BUILDING  A  PLAY  BACKWARD          17 

pact ;  and  yet  we  always  feel  by  instinct  that  he  is  not  a 
great  dramatist.  The  reason  for  this  feeling  is  that  he 
never  heightens  our  interest  in  life  or  adds  to  our  under- 
standing of  it.  He  lacks  the  God-given  ability  to  make 
us  care  about  his  characters.  We  see  them  suffer,  but 
we  do  not  take  them  to  our  hearts  and  feel  their  suffer- 
ings as  our  own.  His  work  is  too  objective,  too  ab- 
stract, to  appeal  to  us  as  human.  But,  considered  solely 
as  a  craftsman,  he  is  the  most  ingenious  artist  in  the 
drama  at  the  present  time. 

In  The  Secret,  M.  Bernstein,  for  a  full  half  of  his 
play,  makes  us  think  [or,  rather  allows  us  to  think] 
that  his  heroine  is  one  sort  of  person;  and  then  turns 
about,  in  the  second  half  of  the  second  act,  and  proves 
to  us  that  she  is  a  totally  different  sort  of  person. 
Amazed  at  the  contradiction  of  the  two  opinions  of  her 
character  which  we  have  held  successively,  we  find  our- 
selves still  groping  for  an  explanation  of  this  personal 
enigma.  This  explanation  is  afforded  in  the  third  and 
final  act.  Here  again,  as  in  The  Attack,  M.  Bernstein 
has  deferred  his  exposition  till  the  end  of  the  play,  in- 
stead of  giving  it  at  the  beginning.  Thereby  he  has 
created  what  may  be  called  an  analytical  suspense, — a 
suspense  of  asking  not,  "What  happens  next?",  but, 
"  Why  did  these  things  happen  ?  "  This  is  perhaps  the 
nearest  approach  to  building  a  play  backward  which 
has  ever  yet  been  made  in  the  theatre  of  the  world. 

It  will  be  noted  also  that  M.  Bernstein  has  brushed 
aside  one  of  the  most  commonly  accepted  dogmas  of  the 
theatre, — the  dogma  that  a  dramatist  must  never  keep 
&  secret  from  his  audience.  The  entire  purpose  of  his 


18       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

pattern  is  to  deceive  his  auditors  for  half  the  play,  and 
then  to  use  the  other  half  to  undeceive  them.  A  con- 
siderable section  of  his  second  act  runs  parallel  to  the 
third  act  of  Othello,  with  the  heroine  playing  the  part 
of  lago ;  but  as  yet  we  have  seen  no  reason  to  suspect 
that  she  is  not  a  generous  and  honest  woman.  It  is  as 
if  Shakespeare,  up  to  the  middle  of  his  third  act,  had 
allowed  us  to  see  lago  only  as  he  appeared  to  the  eyes 
of  his  general — "  This  fellow's  of  exceeding  honesty," — 
and  had  not  allowed  us  to  perceive  the  error  until  it 
became  evident  to  Othello  himself. 

If  this  pattern  had  been  proposed  in  advance  to  any 
jury  of  dramatic  critics  [including  the  present  writer], 
it  would  have  been  rejected  as  unfeasible,  because  of 
the  traditional  belief  that  no  audience  will  submit  to 
the  necessity  of  altering  its  entire  conception  of  a  char- 
acter in  the  middle  of  a  play.  Yet  M.  Bernstein  delib- 
erately chose  this  pattern,  in  defiance  of  tradition ;  and 
his  play  has  pleased  the  public,  in  both  Paris  and  New 
York.  Here,  again,  we  encounter  a  practical  evidence 
of  the  vanity  of  dogma,  and  an  indication  that  no  prin- 
ciple can  ever  be  considered  final  in  dramatic  criticism. 

But,  at  present,  the  most  important  point  for  us  to 
notice  is  that  M.  Bernstein  has  turned  the  formula  of 
Scribe  completely  upside  down,  and  has  chosen  to  end 
his  drama  at  the  point  where  Scribe  would  have  begun  it. 

Shall  the  development  of  backward-looking  narrative 
stop  with  M.  Bernstein?  If  not,  the  only  possible  next 
step  will  be  to  act  out  events  upon  the  stage  in  an  order 
that  reverses  that  in  which  they  are  presumed  to  have 
occurred.  The  actual  action  of  The  Attack  and  The 


BUILDING  A  PLAY  BACKWARD          19 

Secret  is  straightforward  in  chronology ;  and  it  is  only 
in  his  psychological  effect  upon  the  audience  that  M. 
Bernstein  appears  to  build  his  plays  backward.  Re- 
garding that  next  step,  which  now  seems  so  revolution- 
ary, the  critic  can  only  wonder  if  some  very  clever 
playwright  will  attempt  it  in  the  future. 

There  are  certain  stories  which  are  seen  most  natu- 
rally if  we  follow  them  forward  from  causes  to  effects ; 
but  there  are  certain  other  stories  which  can  be  under- 
stood most  truly  only  if  we  follow  them  backward  from 
effects  to  causes.  As  a  matter  of  experiment,  it  would 
be  extremely  interesting  if  some  playwright  should  soon 
set  before  us  a  story  of  this  type  in  the  perspective  of 
reverted  time. 

n 

At  the  very  outset  of  the  autumn  season  of  1914,  a 
great  success  was  achieved  by  a  youth  of  twenty-one 
whose  name  had  never  before  been  heard  of  in  the  thea- 
tre. Like  Lord  Byron,  this  new  playwright  awoke  one 
morning  to  discover  that  he  had  grown  famous  over- 
night. His  name — which  is  familiar  now — is  Elmer  L. 
Reizenstein ;  and  the  title  of  his  play — which  crowded 
the  Candler  Theatre  every  night  for  many  months — is 
On  Trial. 

The  most  remarkable  feature  of  the  success  of  On 
Trial  is  that  it  is  emphatically  a  success  of  art  for  art's 
sake.  The  piece  has  been  accurately  described  by  the 
youthful  author  as  "  an  experiment  in  dramatic  tech- 
nique " ;  and  its  instantaneous  and  huge  success  affords 
a  hitherto  unprecedented  indication  that  our  public  has 


20       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

grown  sufficiently  interested  in  the  technique  of  the 
drama  to  welcome  plays  whose  strongest  bid  for  favor 
is  their  technical  efficiency. 

Until  this  indication  of  a  turning  of  the  tide  in  favor 
of  stagecraft  for  the  sake  of  stagecraft,  it  had  been 
generally  agreed  among  observers  of  our  current  drama 
that  popular  success  depended  more  on  subject-matter 
than  on  technical  dexterity.  Nearly  all  the  plays  that 
have  run,  in  recent  seasons,  more  than  six  months  in 
New  York  have  succeeded  because  of  something  in  the 
theme  or  in  the  story  that  caught  the  fancy  of  the 
public.  While  technical  masterpieces  like  The  Thun- 
derbolt have  failed,  inferior  fabrics  like  Within  the  Law 
have  played  to  crowded  houses  for  a  year  because  of  a 
certain  timeliness  of  interest  in  their  subject-matter. 
Peg  o'  My  Heart  succeeded  because  it  told  a  pretty, 
sentimental  story,  while  Hindle  Wakes  failed  because  it 
told  a  story  that  was  neither  pretty  nor  sentimental. 
By  inference  from  examples  such  as  these,  it  had  ap- 
peared that  the  material  of  a  play  was  the  only  thing 
our  public  cared  about,  and  that  technique — even  the 
technique  of  a  Pinero  or  a  Stanley  Houghton — would 
afford  no  royal  road  to  popular  favor  unless  it  were 
expended  on  a  story  that  was  novel  or  timely  or  pretty 
or  sentimental. 

But  the  subject-matter  of  On  Trial  is  scarcely  inter- 
esting in  itself.  The  play  has  no  theme ;  and  the  story 
that  it  tells  is  not  sentimental  or  pretty  or  timely  or 
even  novel.  A  profligate  induces  an  inexperienced 
young  girl  to  spend  a  night  with  him  at  a  road-house 
by  promising  to  wed  her  on  the  morrow.  The  next 


BUILDING  A  PLAY  BACKWARD          21 

morning  the  girl's  father  appears  at  the  road-house, 
accompanied  by  a  woman  who  is  already  married  to 
the  profligate.  The  villain  runs  away,  and  the  girl  is 
taken  home  by  her  father.  Shortly  afterward,  her 
father  dies;  and  some  years  later  the  girl  meets  and 
marries  an  honorable  man.  A  daughter  is  born  to 
them,  and  they  develop  a  very  happy  home.  It  appears 
that  the  heroine  was  justified  in  concealing  from  her 
husband  the  misfortune  that  had  befallen  her  before  she 
met  him.  But  the  husband  meets  the  profligate  in  the 
business  world,  is  befriended  by  him,  and  even  borrows 
money  from  him.  This  money  he  repays  in  cash ;  but  the 
profligate  takes  advantage  of  the  accidental  renewal  of 
acquaintance  with  the  heroine  to  force  her  to  yield 
to  him  again,  under  threat  of  allowing  the  past 
iniquity  to  be  exposed.  The  husband,  discovering  the 
recent  intrigue,  seeks  out  the  profligate  and  shoots  him 
dead.  A  few  moments  before  the  shooting,  the  private 
secretary  of  the  profligate  has  stolen  from  the  latter's 
safe  the  cash  that  had  just  been  paid  him  by  the  mur- 
derer; and  it  therefore  appears  to  the  police  that  rob- 
bery was  the  motive  for  the  murder.  The  husband 
seizes  on  this  circumstantial  evidence  to  shield  his 
wife  and  child  from  scandal.  He  confesses  himself 
guilty  of  murder  for  the  sake  of  robbery,  and  asks  only 
to  be  sent  to  tbe  electric  chair.  But  the  court  insists 
on  assigning  counsel  to  defend  him ;  and  the  defendant's 
lawyer,  by  calling  the  wronged  wife  to  the  stand,  makes 
clear  the  real  motive  for  the  shooting.  The  private 
secretary  of  the  dead  man  is  also  called  as  a  witness ; 
and  when  the  defendant's  counsel  succeeds  in  forcing 


22       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

him  to  confess  that  it  was  he  who  had  rifled  the 
safe  and  that  this  robbery  had  had  no  connection  with 
the  murder,  the  jury  agree  at  once  in  acquitting  the 
defendant. 

It  will  be  noticed  that  this  story  is  entirely  tradi- 
tional. At  no  moment  does  it  exhibit  any  note  of  nov- 
elty. It  is  sound  enough,  indeed,  to  seem  worthy  of 
retelling;  but  no  one  can  deny  that  it  is  trite.  The 
characters  concerned  in  the  story  are  also  true  enough 
to  life  to  warrant  their  revisiting  the  glimpses  of  the 
footlights;  but  they  are  neither  original  nor  likable 
nor  particularly  interesting.  Why  should  the  public 
flock  to  the  theatre  to  meet  a  man  who  leads  a  girl 
astray,  or  another  man  who  shoots  him  dead?  Why 
should  the  public  still  shed  tears  over  a  wronged  wife, 
and  a  child  who  remains  pathetically  unaware  of  a  scan- 
dal that  has  destroyed  the  happiness  of  her  parents? 

From  questions  such  as  these,  it  should  become  appar- 
ent that  Mr.  Reizenstein  was  dealing  with  a  story  that 
by  no  means  contained,  within  itself,  the  elements  of 
sure  success.  Did  he  succeed,  then,  because  of  any  trick 
of  writing  in  his  dialogue?  The  answer  is,  emphati- 
cally, no.  The  best  that  can  be  said  of  the  writing  of 
On  Trial  is  that  it  is  direct  and  simple  and  concise ;  but 
the  dialogue  is  utterly  devoid  of  literary  charm  and  of 
that  human  richness  which  is  akin  to  hujnor.  Hundreds 
of  plays  which  have  been  obviously  better  written  have 
failed  at  once,  in  recent  years,  upon  our  stage.  Why, 
then,  did  On  Trial  capture  the  public  by  assault? 

The  reason  is  that  Mr.  Reizenstein  utilized  the  novel 
device  of  building  his  story  backward.  This  device  was 


BUILDING  A  PLAY  BACKWARD          23 

interesting  in  itself,  because  it  had  never  been  employed 
before  on  the  American  stage;  and  Mr.  Reizenstein's 
employment  of  it  was  made  doubly  interesting  by  the 
fact  that  he  revealed,  in  this  experiment,  a  technical 
efficiency  that  is  truly  astonishing  in  the  first  work  of 
an  author  with  no  previous  experience  of  the  stage.  In- 
stead of  inventing  a  story  and  then  deciding  how  to 
tell  it,  this  adventurous  young  playwright  started  out 
with  an  idea  of  how  to  tell  a  story  in  a  novel  way  and 
then  invented  a  story  that  would  lend  itself  to  this  pre- 
determined technical  experiment. 

We  have  observed  already  that  the  story  of  On  Trial 
is  rather  commonplace ;  but  Mr.  Reizenstein  has  made  it 
seem,  in  Browning's  phrase,  both  "  strange  and  new  " 
by  revealing  it  from  the  end  to  the  beginning,  instead 
of  from  the  beginning  to  the  end.  Instead  of  starting 
out  with  motives  and  developing  them  to  their  ultimate 
expression  in  facts,  he  has  started  out  with  the  accom- 
plished facts'"  and  then  delved  backward  to  reveal  the 
motives  which  had  instigated  them. 

In  the  first  act  of  On  Trial  we  see  the  murder  com- 
mitted on  the  stage.  In  the  second  act  we  see  enacted 
an  incident  two  hours  before  the  murder  which  makes 
us  aware  of  the  exciting  cause  of  the  subsequent  event 
that  we  have  previously  witnessed.  But  it  is  not  until 
the  third  act,  which  reveals  in  action  an  event  that 
happened  thirteen  years  before,  that  we  are  permitted 
to  discover  and  to  comprehend  the  motives  which  ulti- 
mately culminated  in  %the  shooting  that  we  saw  in  the 
initial  act.  By  telling  his  story  backward,  from  effect 
to  cause,  the  author  has  added  an  element  of  theatrical 


24       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

suspense  to   a  narrative  which   otherwise  might  have 
been  dismissed  by  the  public  as  an  oft-repeated  tale. 

It  must  not  be  inferred  from  the  success  of  Mr. 
Reizenstein's  experiment  that  there  is,  inherently,  any 
greater  virtue  in  building  a  play  backward  than  in 
following  the  chronological  sequence  which  has  always 
heretofore  been  traditional  in  the  drama.  The  choice 
of  method  must  depend  on  the  type  of  story  that  the 
playwright  has  to  tell.  It  remains  as  true  to-day  as 
ever  that  the  great  majority  of  dramatic  stories  may 
be  set  forth  most  effectively  if  they  are  built  up,  syn- 
thetically, from  causes  to  effects.  It  is  only  a  particu- 
lar type  of  narrative — and  stories  of  this  type  will 
always  remain  in  the  minority — that  can  be  set  forth 
most  effectively  if  they  are  analyzed  from  effects  to 
causes.  This  statement  must  be  emphasized,  lest  the 
public  should  be  threatened  with  a  rush  of  plays  whose 
only  claim  to  interest  should  be  that  they  aim  to  illus- 
trate the  Biblical  maxim  that  "the  last  shall  be  first 
and  the  first  shall  be  last."  The  famous  experiment  of 
Columbus  with  the  egg  was  bad  for  the  egg:  there  are 
many  objects  in  the  universe  that  are  not  meant  to 
stand  on  end. 


Ill 

THE  POINT  OF  VIEW 

THE  present  period  of  the  drama  is  one  that  lends 
itself  peculiarly  to  technical  adventure.  The  rapid  de- 
velopment in  the  physical  efficiency  of  the  theatre  that 
has  taken  place  in  the  last  half  century,  and  the  simul- 
taneous increase  in  the  alertness  and  intelligence  of  the 
theatre-going  public,  have  made  it  possible  for  play- 
wrights to  inaugurate  a  series  of  innovations  that  have 
broadened  the  boundaries  of  the  technique  of  the  drama. 
Traditional  ideas,  which  formerly  had  stood  for  cen- 
turies, of  what  can  be  done  in  the  theatre  and  (more 
particularly)  what  cannot  be  done,  are  now  being 
altered  every  season,  as  adventurous  playwrights  press 
forward  to  the  accomplishment  of  technical  tasks  which 
have  never  been  attempted  before. 

In  the  previous  chapter  we  had  occasion  to  celebrate 
the  successful  transference  to  the  service  of  the  drama  of 
a  technical  expedient  which  has  long  been  customary  in 
the  novel — the  expedient,  namely,  of  constructing  a 
story  from  effects  to  causes  and  revealing  it  in  a  pattern 
of  reverted  time.  There  are  many  other  narrative  de- 
vices which  have  long  been  used  in  the  short-story  and 
the  novel,  that  might  be  transferred,  with  equal  advan- 
tage, to  the  strategy  of  the  contemporary  drama.  In 

25 


past  years,  the  critic  has  often  been  required  to  insist 
that  the  art  of  the  novel  is  one  thing  and  the  art  of 
the  drama  is  another;  but,  under  present-day  con- 
ditions, he  is  also  required  to  admit  that  the  differ- 
ence between  the  two  crafts  is  by  no  means  so  decided 
as  it  used  to  be.  For  one  thing,  the  gap  between  the 
novel  and  the  drama  has  been  bridged  over  by  the  mov- 
ing-picture play — an  artistic  product  which  is  equally 
novelistic  and  dramatic;  and,  for  another  thing,  the 
recent  improvements  in  stage  machinery,  which  have 
made  it  possible  to  shift  a  set  in  less  than  thirty  sec- 
onds of  absolute  darkness  and  absolute  quiet,  have  also 
made  it  possible  for  the  playwright  to  adopt  a  freer 
form  of  narrative  than  was  imposed  upon  him  twenty 
years  ago.  We  may  confidently  expect  that,  in  the 
next  few  years,  the  drama  will  avail  itself  more  and 
more  of  narrative  devices  which,  though  thoroughly 
established  in  the  novel,  have  hitherto  been  regarded 
as  beyond  the  reach  of  stagecraft. 

Students  of  the  technique  of  the  novel  are  aware  that, 
ever  since  the  outset  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the 
novelist  has  been  permitted  to  project  his  narrative 
from  either  of  two  totally  different  points  of  view,  which 
may  be  called,  for  convenience,  the  internal  and  the 
external.  He  may  reveal  his  story  internally,  as  it 
appears  to  the  mind  of  one  or  another  of  the  actors 
who  take  part  in  it ;  or  he  may  reveal  it  externally,  as 
it  would  appear  to  a  disinterested  mind  sitting  aloof 
from  all  the  characters  and  regarding  them  with  what 
Mr.  Alfred  Noyes  has  greatly  called  "  the  splendor  of 
the  indifference  of  God."  Heretofore,  only  the  second 


THE  POINT  OF  VIEW  27 

of  these  points  of  view  has  been  permitted  to  the  drama- 
tist. He  has  been  obliged  to  set  his  characters  equi- 
distant from  "  the  god-like  spectator  "  (to  quote  Mr. 
Archer's  phrase),  and  has  been  required  to  reveal  them 
through  an  atmosphere  of  inviolable  objectivity. 

Novelists  like  George  Eliot  have  been  accustomed 
to  avail  themselves  of  the  privilege  of  vivisecting  the 
brains  of  their  characters  and  analyzing  those  most 
intimate  thoughts  and  emotions  that  never  translate 
themselves  into  speech  or  express  themselves  in  action ; 
but,  since  the  renunciation  (both  for  better  and  for 
worse)  of  the  technical  expedients  of  the  soliloquy  and 
the  aside,  the  dramatist  has  been  denied  this  great  ad- 
vantage of  entering  the  mind  of  any  of  his  characters 
and  forcing  the  audience,  for  the  moment,  to  look  at 
the  entire  play  from  this  individual  and  personal  point 
of  view. 

Recently,  however,  a  few  adventurous  playwrights 
have  discovered  a  more  effective  means  than  any  series 
of  soliloquies  and  asides  for  shifting  the  audience,  at 
any  moment,  from  an  external  and  objective  point  of 
view  to  a  point  of  view  that  is  internal  and  subjective. 
The  second  act  of  that  beautiful  and  well-remembered 
play,  The  Poor  Little  Rich  Girl,  was  exhibited  from  the 
point  of  view  of  a  child  whose  mind  is  drifting  under 
the  influence  of  an  opiate;  and  in  a  more  recent  play 
entitled  The  Phantom  Rival,  an  entire  act  is  devoted 
to  the  exhibition  of  events  that  happen  only  in  the 
fancy  of  one  of  the  leading  characters. 

The  success  of  such  experiments  as  these  sets  the 
dramatist  on  an  equal  footing  with  the  novelist  in  the 


28       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

very  important  matter  of  being  permitted  to  shift 
the  point  of  view  from  which  his  story  is  to  be  observed. 
The  full  advantage  of  this  technical  innovation  has  not 
yet  been  reaped  in  the  theatre;  but  a  whole  new  field 
has  been  opened  up  to  future  playwrights.  Would  it 
not  be  interesting,  for  instance,  to  show  a  certain  scene 
as  it  appeared  from  the  point  of  view  of  one  of  the 
characters  concerned,  and  subsequently  to  reenact  the 
entire  scene  as  it  appeared  from  the  very  different  point 
of  view  of  another  of  the  characters?  This  ironical 
device  has  already  been  employed  in  the  novel,  by  such 
technical  experimentalists  as  Mr.  Arnold  Bennett.  Be- 
fore long  we  may  expect  to  see  it  successfully  employed 
upon  the  stage. 

The  Phantom  Rival  was  written  by  Ferenc  Molnar, 
a  Hungarian  dramatist  who  has  nearly  always  shown 
an  adventurous  originality  in  his  technical  attack.  The 
American  version  was  made  by  Mr.  Leo  Ditrichstein. 

In  the  labor-saving  first  act  of  this  play,  the  theme 
is  outlined  in  a  conversation  between  a  writer  and  an 
actor,  which  takes  place  in  a  restaurant.  The  writer 
expounds  a  theory  that  most  women  treasure  through- 
out their  entire  lives  an  idealized  image  of  the  man  who 
has  first  awakened  them  to  a  consciousness  of  love,  and 
that,  even  though  they  subsequently  marry  some  one 
else,  they  continue,  in  the  secret  recesses  of  their  minds, 
to  compare  their  husband,  to  his  disadvantage,  with  this 
phantom  rival. 

This  explicit  conversation  is  a  sort  of  prologue  to 
the  play,  in  which  neither  the  writer  nor  the  actor  is 
involved.  The  leading  figure  in  the  comedy  is  a  woman 


THE  POINT  OF  VIEW  29 

married  to  a  husband  who  is  jealous  not  only  of  her 
present  but  also  of  her  past.  He  discovers  that  before 
her  marriage  she  had  been  interested  in  a  certain  Rus- 
sian; and,  though  this  Russian  had  returned  to  his 
native  country  seven  years  before,  the  husband  now 
insists  that  his  wife  shall  read  to  him  the  treasured 
letter  which  the  lover  of  her  youth  had  sent  to  her  at 
parting.  In  this  letter,  the  eager  foreigner  had  told 
her  that  he  would  come  back  to  her  some  day — as  a 
great  general,  or  a  great  statesman,  or  a  great,  artist, 
or  even,  if  the  worst  befell  him,  as  a  humble  tramp  who 
would  lay  the  wreckage  of  his  life  beneath  her  feet. 
The  husband  sneers  at  this  highfaluting  letter,  and 
thereby  stimulates  the  imagination  of  his  wife  to  rush 
to  the  rescue  of  his  phantom  rival. 

She  drifts  into  a  day-dream,  in  which  her  mind, 
hovering  between  sleep  and  waking,  bodies  forth  an 
image  of  her  former  lover  in  the  successive  guises  of  a 
great  general,  a  great  statesman,  a  great  artist,  and  a 
humble  tramp.  These  scenes  are  exhibited  entirely  from 
the  heroine's  point  of  view.  She  knows  nothing  of  the 
actual  conditions  of  any  of  the  careers  about  which 
she  is  dreaming;  and,  naturally  enough,  her  phantom 
lover  appears  to  her  as  an  utterly  impossible  sort  of 
person,  acting  out  heroical  absurdities  and  talking  all 
the  while  the  stilted  language  of  a  Laura  Jean  Libbey 
novel. 

In  the  third  act  we  are  recalled  to  actuality.  The 
former  lover  of  the  heroine,  returned  from  Russia, 
makes  a  business  call  upon  her  husband,  and  reveals 
himself  to  her  as  an  utterly  undistinguished  and  small- 


30       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

minded  character.  Comparing  this  trivial  little  per- 
son with  the  huge  dreams  she  has  had  of  him,  the  wife 
is  forced  to  admit  that  her  husband  is  the  better  man 
and  to  expel  the  phantom  rival  from  the  regions  of 
her  fancy. 


IV 

SURPRISE  IN  THE  DRAMA 

IN  recent  years  our  native  playwrights  have  devoted 
a  great  deal  of  attention  to  technical  experiment.  It 
might  be  argued  that  they  would  have  fared  better  if 
they  had  thought  more  about  life  and  less  about  the 
theatre;  but,  though  they  have  discovered  compara- 
tively little  to  say,  they  have  at  least  devised  many 
means  of  saying  things  ingeniously.  This  is,  per- 
haps, the  necessary  mark  of  a  drama  that  is  still  so 
young  as  ours.  Youth  cares  more  for  cleverness  than 
it  cares  for  the  more  sedentary  quality  of  insight. 
When  Mr.  George  M.  Cohan  is  ninety  years  of  age — 
and  our  theatre  has  grown  hoary  in  the  interval — he 
will  have  more  to  tell  us  about  life,  but  he  will  no  longer 
make  a  pattern  so  astonishingly  dexterous  as  that  of 
Seven  Keys  to  Baldpate. 

Mr.  Reizenstein's  On  Trial  is  typical  of  the  current 
aspect  of  our  growing  drama.  In  subject-matter,  it  is 
"weary,  stale,  flat,  and  unprofitable";  for  it  tells  us 
nothing  about  life  that  has  not  been  told — and  often 
told  more  wisely — in  innumerable  antecedent  melo- 
dramas. But  in  method,  it  is  novel  and  exceedingly 
ingenious. 

Not  all  of  the  adventurous  experiments  of  our  Amer- 

31 


32       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

ican  playwrights  have  been  so  signally  successful;  but 
all  of  them  are  worthy  of  theoretical  consideration.  In 
the  present  chapter,  it  may  be  profitable  to  examine  the 
concerted  assault  which  has  recently  been  made  against 
the  time-honored  tradition  of  the  theatre  that  a  dram- 
atist must  never  keep  a  secret  from  his  audience. 

Concerning  this  tradition,  Mr.  William  Archer  said 
in  1912,  "  So  far  as  I  can  see,  the  strongest  reason 
against  keeping  a  secret  is  that,  try  as  you  may,  you 
cannot  do  it.  ...  From  only  one  audience  can  a 
secret  be  really  hidden,  a  considerable  percentage  of 
any  subsequent  audience  being  certain  to  know  all  about 
it  in  advance.  The  more  striking  and  successful  is  the 
first-night  effect  of  surprise,  the  more  certainly  and 
rapidly  will  the  report  of  it  circulate  through  all  strata 
of  the  theatrical  public."  This  statement,  which  seems 
sound  enough  in  theory,  has  failed  to  prove  itself  in 
practice;  and  the  fact  of  the  matter  seems  to  be  that 
the  "  theatrical  public  "  is  far  less  cohesive  than  Mr. 
Archer  has  assumed.  News  does  not  travel,  either  rap- 
idly or  readily,  through  all  its  very  different  strata. 
This  fact  was  indicated  by  the  career  of  Mr.  Roi 
Cooper  Megrue's  surprise-play,  Under  Cover.  Although 
the  piece  had  previously  run  a  year  in  Boston,  the 
vast  majority  of  those  who  saw  it  on  the  first  night  in 
New  York  were  completely  taken  in  by  the  dramatist's 
deception;  and,  even  after  the  play  had  run  for  many 
months  in  the  metropolis,  and  had  been  analyzed  re- 
peatedly in  the  press,  it  was  still  observable  that  the 
majority  of  those  who  came  to  see  it  were  still  ignorant 
of  the  precise  nature  of  the  trick  that  was  to  be  played 


SURPRISE  IN  THE  DRAMA  33 

upon  them.  They  came  to  the  theatre  with  a  vague 
notion  that  the  plot  would  be  surprising,  but  they  did 
not  know  the  story  in  advance. 

Mr.  Max  Marcin,  the  author  of  a  clever  surprise- 
play,  Cheating  Cheaters,  complained,  after  the  first 
night,  that  it  was  unfair  for  the  newspapers  to  print 
summaries  of  his  plot,  thereby  revealing  in  advance  to 
future  audiences  the  nature  of  the  trap  the  dramatist 
had  set  for  them.  This  protest,  perhaps,  was  justified 
in  theory;  but,  in  fact,  the  author  had  no  reason  for 
complaint.  Even  that  minority  of  the  theatre-going 
public  who  habitually  read  the  first-night  notices  in 
the  newspapers  do  not  long  recall  specifically  what  is 
said  in  them.  All  that  they  carry  away  from  the  read- 
ing is  a  vague  impression  that  the  play  was  praised  or 
damned:  it  is  only  the  few  people  who  do  not  pay  for 
tickets  to  the  theatre  who  read  these  notices  more  deeply 
and  remember  the  details. 

The  reports  of  current  plays  that  circulate  by  word 
of  mouth  among  the  ticket-buying  public  are  nearly 
always  very  vague.  A  man  will  tell  his  friends  that  a 
certain  piece  is  "  a  good  show  " ;  but  rarely,  if  ever, 
would  he  be  able  to  pass  on  in  conversation  a  coherent 
statement  of  the  plot.  Though  Cheating  Cheaters  was 
played  to  large  audiences  for  many  months,  the  big  sur- 
prise of  the  plot  remained  a  mystery  to  three-fourths  of 
all  the  people  who  attended  it.  Those  of  us  who  go  pro- 
fessionally to  the  theatre  do  not  always  realize  how 
little  the  general  public  knows  in  advance  about  current 
plays  with  which  we  ourselves  are  thoroughly  familiar. 

Despite,  then,  what  Mr.  Archer  said  in  1912,  it  has 


34       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

been  subsequently  proved  by  several  experiments  that 
it  is  entirely  possible  to  keep  a  secret  in  the  theatre. 
But  the  question  still  remains  whether  it  is  worth  while 
to  do  so.  The  success  of  a  surprise-play  proves  noth- 
ing ;  for  it  does  not  prove  that  the  same  play  would  not 
have  been  equally  successful  if  the  surprise  had  been 
eliminated  from  the  plot. 

Consider  Under  Cover,  for  example.  The  hero  was 
introduced  to  the  audience  as  a  smuggler,  engaged  in 
the  perilous  enterprise  of  sneaking  a  valuable  neck- 
lace through  the  customs.  For  two  acts  he  was  pursued 
by  customs-house  officials ;  and,  when  ultimately  cap- 
tured, he  bought  them  off  with  a  bribe.  Then,  in  the 
last  moments  of  the  play,  the  dramatist  revealed  the 
hidden  fact  that  the  hero  was  not  a  smuggler  after  all, 
but  an  official  of  the  United  States  secret  service  en- 
gaged in  tracking  down  corruption  in  the  customs- 
house. 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  the  suspense  of  the  melo- 
drama was  increased  by  the  retention  of  this  secret  till 
the  final  moment ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  several  other 
elements  of  interest  were  sacrificed.  For  instance,  the 
love-story  was  imperiled  by  the  fact  that  the  audience 
had  to  watch  the  heroine  fall  in  love  with  a  man  who, 
by  every  evidence,  appeared  to  be  a  criminal.  Further- 
more, the  author  had  to  tell  lies  to  his  audience  in  those 
passages  in  which  the  hero  was  left  alone  on  the  stage 
with  his  confederate ;  and  telling  lies,  even  in  a  melo- 
drama, is  a  hazardous  proceeding.  The  play  was  a 
great  success ;  but  what  evidence  is  there  to  prove  that 
it  might  not  have  been  equally  successful  if  the  author 


SURPRISE  IN  THE  DRAMA  35 

had  taken  the  audience  into  his  confidence  from  the 
start  and  permitted  the  public  to  watch,  from  the  stand- 
point of  superior  knowledge,  the  corrupt  customs-house 
officials  walking  ignorantly  into  the  trap  which  had  been 
set  for  them?  I  do  not  state  that  this  is  so;  but  I  do 
state  that  the  only  way  to  prove  that  it  is  not  so  would 
be  to  build  the  plot  the  other  way  and  try  it  on  the 
public. 

Of  course,  the  strongest  argument  against  keeping  a 
secret  from  the  audience  is  that  this  procedure,  in  the 
admirable  phrase  of  Mr.  Archer,  "  deprives  the  audi- 
ence of  that  superior  knowledge  in  which  lies  the  irony 
of  drama."  The  audience  likes  to  know  more  about  the 
people  in  a  play  than  they  know  about  themselves ;  for 
this  superior  knowledge  places  the  spectators  in  the 
comfortable  attitude  of  gods  upon  Olympus,  looking 
down  upon  the  destinies  of  men.  It  is  not  nearly  so 
amusing  to  be  fooled  as  it  is  to  watch  other  people  being 
fooled;  and  this  would  seem  to  be  a  fundamental  fact 
of  psychology.  Against  this  fundamental  fact,  the 
success  of  a  dozen  or  a  hundred  surprise-plays  can 
scarcely  be  regarded  as  weighing  down  the  balance. 
The  audience,  for  instance,  would  feel  much  more  sym- 
pathetic toward  the  heroine  in  Under  Cover  if,  all  the 
while  that  she  was  falling  in  love  with  a  person  who 
appeared  to  be  a  criminal,  the  audience  knew  that  he 
was  really  an  honest  man. 

But  another  argument  against  keeping  a  secret  from 
the  audience  is  that,  in  order  to  do  so,  it  is  nearly 
always  necessary  to  tell  deliberate  lies  to  lead  the  audi- 
ence astray.  There  is  an  instance  of  this  in  an  inter- 


36       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

esting  play  by  Mr.  Jules  Eckert  Goodman,  entitled 
The  Man  Who  Came  Back.  This  play  leads  us  around 
the  world  and  back  again,  following  the  fortunes  of  a 
prodigal  son  who  has  been  cast  adrift  by  his  father. 
On  the  way,  we  meet  another  person  drifting  without 
anchor, — a  certain  Captain  Trevelan.  This  British 
idler  marries  a  girl  whom  he  has  run  across  in  a  cabaret 
in  San  Francisco;  and,  encountering  the  couple  later 
on  in  Honolulu,  we  are  shown  at  considerable  length 
that  their  marrmge  has  turned  out  unhappily.  In  the 
last  act,  we  are  told  suddenly  that  Trevelan  is  not  a 
British  captain  at  all,  but  merely  a  New  York  detective 
who  has  been  employed  by  the  hero's  father  to  travel 
round  the  world  and  keep  watch  upon  the  movements  of 
his  prodigal  son.  This  statement  comes,  indeed,  as  a 
surprise ;  but  nothing  is  ever  said  to  explain  away  the 
wife  that  Trevelan  has  left  behind  in  Honolulu.  Was 
she  also  a  detective,  or  did  Trevelan  really  marry  and 
desert  her,  for  the  purpose  of  preventing  the  audience 
from  guessing  his  identity?  The  play  as  a  whole  is 
not  imperiled  by  this  jugglery,  since  the  mysterious 
detective  is  merely  an  incidental  figure  in  the  plot ;  but 
we  feel  that  the  author  has  severely  compromised  him- 
self for  the  sake  of  a  single  effect  of  sharp  surprise  in 
the  course  of  his  concluding  act. 

Another  important  point  to  be  considered  is  that, 
when  the  appeal  of  a  play  is  dependent  mainly  on  sur- 
prise, the  author  is  impeded  from  drawing  characters 
consistently.  It  is  impossible  to  draw  the  sort  of  per- 
son that  the  hero  really  is,  and  at  the  same  time  to  per- 
suade the  audience,  until  the  final  revelation  of  the 


SURPRISE  IN  THE  DRAMA  37 

secret,  that  the  hero  is  another  sort  of  person  alto- 
gether. Deception  of  this  kind  can,  therefore,  never  be 
accomplished  in  a  play  that  is  sufficiently  serious  in 
subject-matter  to  demand  reality  in  characterization. 
The  pattern  of  surprise  is  available  only  for  farces  and 
for  melodramas,  in  which  the  incidents  are  all  that 
count  and  the  characters  are  secondary.  To  deceive 
the  audience  successfully  in  high  comedy  or  in  tragedy 
would  require  a  falsification  that  would  consign  the 
play  to  ruin.  The  public  consciously  will  swallow  lies 
only  in  regard  to  stories  that  do  not  seriously  matter. 
To  sum  the  matter  up,  the  sort  of  surprise  which 
must  be  regarded  absolutely  as  inacceptable  in  any  play 
is  the  sort  which  depends  for  its  success  upon  a  clear 
negation  of  what  has  gone  before.  Nothing  can  be 
gained  by  the  procedure  of  telling  the  public  one  thing 
for  two  hours  and  a  half  and  then  telling  the  public  in 
two  minutes  that  it  has  merely  been  deceived.  Such 
jugglery  is  easy  to  encompass,  and  is  sometimes  enter- 
taining in  effect ;  but  it  leads  away  from  that  interpre- 
tation of  the  underlying  truth  of  life  which  is  the  end 
of  art. 


THE  TROUBLESOME  LAST  ACT 

THERE  is  an  old  saying  in  the  theatre  that  hell  is 
paved  with  good  first  acts ;  for  many  a  play  has  started 
out  with  promise  and  failed  to  fulfil  that  promise  in 
the  end.  It  must  not  be  supposed,  however,  that  first 
acts  are  easy  to  construct.  In  fact,  the  very  contrary 
is  true ;  for  the  technical  problem  of  laying  out  a  well- 
ordered  exposition  is  one  of  the  most  difficult  for  the 
playwright  to  attack.  But,  even  if  he  falters  in  his 
handling  of  this  problem,  he  may  be  carried  safely  by 
his  subject-matter.  If  the  project  of  his  play  is  at  all 
interesting,  and  particularly  if  it  shows  the  trait  of 
novelty,  a  barely  adequate  exposition  of  this  project 
will  attract  the  attention  of  the  audience  and  hold  it 
until  time  is  called  by  the  first  curtain-fall. 

In  the  subsequent  acts,  however,  the  attention  of  the 
audience  is  shifted  from  a  consideration  of  the  material 
itself  to  a  consideration  of  what  the  playwright  does 
with  this  material;  and  this  is  the  reason  why  a 
faltering  technique  is  more  disastrous  to  a  play 
in  those  acts  which  come  subsequent  to  the  exposi- 
tion. A  certain  expectation  has  already  been  aroused; 
and  the  audience  will  be  disappointed  if  this  expectation 

38 


THE  TROUBLESOME  LAST  ACT          39 

is  not  satisfied  with  proper  emphasis.  To  climb  the 
ladder  to  a  climax  without  ever  missing  footing  on  an 
upward  step  is  a  technical  task  that  calls  for  nice  dis- 
crimination. The  climax  itself  is  usually  easy  to 
achieve.  It  is  the  first  thing  that  the  author  has 
imagined;  it  is,  indeed,  the  raison  d'etre  of  his  play; 
and  the  "  big  scene  "  so  much  admired  by  the  public 
has  seldom  cost  the  playwright  any  trouble.  But  this 
climax  is  customarily  succeeded  by  a  last  act  that  is 
troublesome  indeed ;  and  it  is  precisely  at  this  point  that 
the  majority  of  plays  are  dashed  upon  the  rocks  of 
failure.  It  is  harder  to  write  a  satisfactory  last  act 
than  to  write  twenty  good  "  big  scenes  "  or  ten  ade- 
quately interesting  acts  of  exposition.  These  figures 
have  been  gathered  from  observing  many  plays.  The 
fact,  then,  is  empirical :  but  wherein  lies  the  explanation 
of  the  fact? 

The  main  difficulty  in  laying  out  a  satisfactory  last 
act  arises  from  the  fact  that  it  comes  by  custom  after 
the  climax  of  the  play  and  is  consequently  doomed  to 
deal  with  material  inherently  less  dramatic  than  what 
has  gone  before.  To  state  the  matter  in  the  simplest 
terms,  it  is  more  difficult  for  the  playwright  to  conduct 
a  falling  than  a  rising  action.  Whatever  follows  a 
climax  must  appear  an  anti-climax;  and  the  play- 
wright, like  the  mountain-climber,  is  inclined  to  stumble 
on  the  downward  trail. 

Why  not,  then,  obliterate  this  downward  trail?, — 
why  not  build  the  action  to  its  climax  and  then  sud- 
denly cut  off  any  further  consideration  of  the  story? 
The  negative  answer  to  this  question  is  based  upon  tra- 


40       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

idition ;  and  it  is  therefore  necessary  that  the  origins  of 
this  tradition  should  briefly  be  examined. 

In  Greek  tragedy  the  climax  of  the  play  was  always 
followed  by  a  period  of  falling  action,  in  which  the 
tragic  tensity  was  lessened  and  the  mood  was  softened 
to  serenity.  Nearly  all  the  literary  critics  have  as- 
sumed that  the  Greeks  adopted  this  pattern  in  obedience 
to  some  esthetic  theory ;  but  to  a  critic  of  the  drama  it 
seems  more  sensible  to  suppose  that  this  pattern  was 
imposed  upon  them  by  the  necessity  of  providing  for 
an  exodus  of  the  chorus  from  the  orchestra.  The 
chorus  could  not  march  out  while  the  three  actors  on 
the  stage  were  still  in  the  throes  of  the  climax;  and  it 
could  not  remain  in  the  orchestra  after  the  play  was 
over.  Hence  a  period  of  falling  action  had  to  be  pro- 
vided as  a  sort  of  recessional  for  the  supernumeraries. 

The  anti-climax  at  the  close  of  Elizabethan  tragedy 
may  be  similarly  explained  by  reference  to  the  physical 
peculiarities  of  the  Elizabethan  theatre.  After  Shake- 
speare had  strewed  the  stage  with  bodies  in  the  last  act 
of  Hamlet,  he  had  to  provide  a  period  of  diminished 
tensity  during  which  the  accumulated  dead  could  be 
carried  off  the  stage.  The  simple  reason  for  this  fact 
is  that  he  had  no  curtain  to  ring  down.  Hence,  in  the 
original  text,  the  long  continuance  of  unimportant  talk 
after  the  entrance  of  Fortinbras.  Hence,  also,  in  the 
original  text  of  Romeo  and  Juliet,  the  interminable 
speech  of  Friar  Laurence  at  the  conclusion  of  the 
tragedy.  This,  obviously,  was  provided  to  afford  suffi- 
cient time  to  carry  off  the  bodies  of  Romeo  and  Juliet 
and  Paris. 


THE  TROUBLESOME  LAST  ACT          41 

We  are  so  accustomed  to  the  proscenium  curtain  in 
the  modern  theatre  that  we  are  likely  to  forget  that  this 
revolutionary  innovation  was  not  introduced  until  the 
latter  half  of  the  seventeenth  century.  For  more  than 
two  centuries  it  has  been  possible  to  drop  the  curtain 
and  suddenly  exclude  from  observation  all  the  actors  on 
the  stage ;  but  this  fact  has  not  as  yet  succeeded  utterly 
in  overturning  a  tradition  of  the  drama  which  had  been 
necessitated  by  the  physical  requirements  of  the  pre- 
ceding twenty  centuries. 

But,  granted  our  proscenium  curtain,  is  there  any 
real  reason  why  we  should  continue  longer  to  follow  the 
Greeks  and  the  Elizabethans  in  their  custom  of  carrying 
a  play  beyond  its  climax  to  an  anti-climax?  It  is  evi- 
dent that  Ibsen  did  not  think  so.  Both  in  A  Doll's 
House  and  in  Ghosts  he  rang  the  final  curtain  down  at 
the  highest  point  of  tensity,  and  left  the  most  momen- 
tous question  of  the  play  still  undecided. 

The  great  example  of  Ibsen  should  make  us  bold  to 
try  to  do  away  entirely  with  the  period  of  falling  action 
that  characterized  the  close  of  Greek  and  Elizabethan 
tragedy.  The  best  way  to  deal  with  the  troublesome 
last  act  is  not  to  write  it  at  all.  The  insistence  of  this 
motive  accounts,  historically,  for  the  fact  that,  late  in 
the  nineteenth  century,  the  traditional  five-act  pattern 
was  discarded  for  a  four-act  form,  and  that,  early  in 
the  twentieth  century,  this  four-act  pattern  has,  in 
turn,  been  superseded  in  favor  of  a  three-act  form. 
These  two  progressive  changes  in  the  standard  struc- 
ture of  the  drama  have  been  occasioned  by  a  growing 
desire  to  do  away  with  the  troublesome  last  act. 


42       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

The  extreme  of  this  treatment  is  exhibited  in  the 
famous  close  of  The  Madras  House,  by  Mr.  Granville 
Barker.  The  final  curtain  cuts  off  a  conversation  in 
mid-career ;  and  the  stage-direction  reads,  "  She  doesn't 
finish,  for  really  there  is  no  end  to  the  subject."  This 
piece  was  designed  by  Mr.  Barker  to  illustrate  the 
thesis  that  a  play  should  have  no  end,  since,  in  life 
itself,  nothing  is  terminal  and  nothing  is  conclusive. 
The  play,  however,  was  an  utter  failure ;  and  the  dis- 
aster that  attended  its  production  seemed  to  prove  that 
the  public  preferred  the  traditional  pattern  to  Mr. 
Barker's  unprecedented  attempt  to  approximate  the 
inconclusiveness  of  nature. 

But  this  attempt  to  obliterate  the  troublesome  last 
act  might  have  been  more  hospitably  welcomed  if  Mr. 
Barker  had  chosen  to  cut  off  his  play  at  the  moment  of 
greatest  interest  and  highest  tensity.  There  seems  to  be 
no  theoretic  reason  why  the  periodic  structure  devel- 
oped for  the  short-story  by  Guy  de  Maupassant  should 
not  be  successfully  transferred  to  the  service  of  the 
serious  drama.  It  ought  to  be  possible,  by  the  exercise 
of  sufficient  ingenuity,  to  hold  back  the  solution  of  a 
serious  plot  until  the  very  last  line  of  the  last  act. 
This  feat  was  successfully  accomplished  by  Mr. 
Augustus  Thomas  in  one  of  the  most  skilful  of  his 
lighter  plays,  Mrs.  Leffingwell's  Boots. 

In  farce,  however,  the  problem  of  the  playwright  is 
more  difficult.  A  farce  is  customarily  developed  to  its 
climax  through  a  series  of  misunderstandings  between 
the  various  characters.  On  the  one  hand,  it  appears 
impossible  to  close  the  play  without  clearing  up  these 


THE  TROUBLESOME  LAST  ACT          43 

foregone  misunderstandings  by  explaining  them  to  all 
the  characters  involved;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  these 
eleventh-hour  passages  of  explanation  must  deal  neces- 
sarily with  materials  of  which  the  audience  has  all  the 
time  been  cognizant,  and  must,  therefore,  result  in  the 
falling-off  of  interest  that  attends  the  hearing  of  a 
twice-told  tale.  If  some  master  could  invent  a  method 
to  do  away  entirely  with  the  troublesome  last  act  of 
farce,  he  would  indeed  confer  a  boon  on  future  play- 
wrights. 

Nothing  has  been  said  thus  far  concerning  that  falsi- 
fication in  the  last  act  of  a  play  which  is  commonly 
assumed  to  be  demanded  by  the  public.  In  an  absolute 
sense,  any  ending  to  a  play  is  false  to  nature,  since  in 
life  itself  there  can  never  be  an  utter  termination  to  a 
series  of  events;  and  it  has,  therefore,  frequently  been 
argued  that,  to  end  a  play,  the  dramatist  is  justified  in 
cogging  the  dice  of  circumstance  in  favor  of  those  char- 
acters with  whom  the  audience  has  come  to  sympathize. 
This  argument,  apparently,  holds  good  for  comedy, 
since  it  is  supported  by  the  constant  practice  of  such 
great  dramatists  as  Moliere  and  Shakespeare.  But  in 
proportion  as  a  play  becomes  more  serious,  the  audience 
will  tend  more  and  more  to  be  disappointed  by  any  end- 
ing that  does  not  follow  as  a  logical  result  from  all  the 
incidents  that  have  preceded  it.  Shakespeare  is  allowed 
to  falsify  the  end  of  As  You  Like  It;  but  the  audience 
would  be  deeply  disappointed  if  Hamlet  were  permitted 
to  live  happily  forever  after  the  conclusion  of  the  play. 

There  are  certain  plays,  and  not  all  of  these  by  any 
means  are  tragedies,  that — to  use  a  phrase  of  Steven- 


44       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

son's — "  begin  to  end  badly  " ;  and  to  give  them  arbi- 
trarily a  happy  ending  results  merely  in  preventing  the 
audience  from  enjoying  the  exercise  of  that  contribu- 
tory faculty  which  the  late  William  James  described  as 
"  the  will  to  believe."  Those  managers,  therefore,  are 
misguided  who  persist  in  assuming  that  the  public  will 
prefer  an  illogical  happy  ending  to  an  unhappy  ending 
that  has  clearly  been  foreshadowed.  Yet  the  recent 
history  of  the  drama  shows  many  instances  of  plays 
with  two  last  acts — the  one  preferred  for  its  logic  by 
the  author,  and  the  other  preferred  for  its  optimism 
by  the  manager.  Thus,  The  Profligate  of  Sir  Arthur 
Pinero  has  two  last  acts.  In  the  first  version,  the 
profligate  takes  poison;  and  in  the  second  version  he 
lives  happily  forever  after.  In  a  recent  farce  by  the 
same  author,  Preserving  Mr.  Panmure,  one  last  act 
was  provided  for  the  production  in  London  and  a  differ- 
ent last  act  was  provided  for  the  production  in  New 
York;  and  it  appears  that  the  same  astonishing  pro- 
cedure is  destined  to  be  followed  in  the  exhibition  of  Sir 
Arthur's  latest  play,  The  Big  Drum.  When  Henry 
Bernstein's  Israel  was  produced  in  Paris,  the  hero  com- 
mitted suicide  at  the  close  of  the  play;  but  when  the 
piece  was  subsequently  produced  in  New  York  he  merely 
married  a  girl  in  a  picture  hat.  This  change,  sug- 
gested by  the  late  Charles  Frohman, — although  it  re- 
duced the  entire  play  to  nonsense, — was  accomplished 
with  the  consent  and  connivance  of  the  author.  Both 
The  Legend  of  Leonora,  by  Sir  James  Barrie,  and  The 
New  Sin,  by  Mr.  B.  Macdonald  Hastings,  were  pro- 
duced in  New  York  with  troublesome  last  acts  which 


THE  TROUBLESOME  LAST  ACT          45 

did  not  exist  at  all  when  the  two  plays  were  first  pro- 
duced in  London.  It  will  be  seen,  therefore,  that  even 
authors  of  acknowledged  eminence  are  not  entirely 
immune  from  falsifying  the  concluding  moments  of  their 
plays  when  pressure  is  brought  to  bear  upon  them  by 
friendly  and  persuasive  managers.  To  rescue  compara- 
tively unestablished  playwrights  from  this  insidious 
insistence,  the  only  certain  remedy  will  be  the  general 
adoption  of  a  new  dramatic  pattern  in  which  the 
troublesome  last  act  will,  by  common  consent,  remain 
unwritten. 


VI 
STRATEGY  AND  TACTICS 

IN  his  very  valuable  lecture  on  Robert  Louis  Steven- 
son: The  Dramatist,  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  has  drawn  a 
distinction  between  what  he  calls  the  "  strategy  "  and 
the  "  tactics  "  of  play-making.  He  defines  strategy  as 
"  the  general  laying  out  of  a  play  "  and  tactics  as  "  the 
art  of  getting  the  characters  on  and  off  the  stage,  of 
conveying  information  to  the  audience,  and  so  forth." 
Though  this  definition  is  by  no  means  complete,  it  is 
sufficiently  suggestive  to  afford  a  convenient  addition  to 
the  terminology  of  dramatic  criticism.  The  distinction 
between  strategy  and  tactics  is  a  distinction  between 
large  and  little,  between  the  general  and  the  particu- 
lar ;  and  while  to  strategy  it  seems  appropriate  to  apply 
the  adjective  "  dramatic,"  it  appears  more  logical  to 
link  the  adjective  "  theatrical  "  with  tactics. 

It  is  easily  evident  that  a  genius  for  strategy  and  a 
talent  for  tactics  do  not  necessarily  go  hand  in  hand. 
Every  great  dramatist  must  be  a  great  strategist, — a 
master,  as  Sir  Arthur  says,  of  "  the  general  laying  out 
of  a  play  " ;  but  the  utmost  cleverness  in  tactics  is  usu- 
ally attained  by  dramatists  who  hover,  at  their  best,  a 
little  lower  than  the  greatest.  A  mind  that  is  capable 
of  imagining  the  large  is  often  neglectful  of  the  little. 

46 


STRATEGY  AND  TACTICS  47 

Thus,  the  general  laying  out  of  the  later  acts  of  Romeo 
and  Juliet  is  masterly  and  massive ;  but  the  particular 
turn  in  tactics  because  of  which  Romeo  fails  to  receive 
the  message  from  Friar  Laurence  is  merely  accidental, 
and  must  be  regarded,  therefore,  as  a  fault  in  art.  A 
secondary  playwright,  less  obsessed  with  the  grandeur 
of  the  general  conception,  would  probably  have  been 
more  careful  of  this  dangerous  detail ;  for  minor  men, 
who  deal  with  minor  themes,  have  more  attention  left 
to  be  devoted  to  theatrical  perfections. 

Ibsen  also,  though  supreme  in  strategy,  is  often 
faulty  in  his  tactics.  Consider,  for  example,  the  last 
act  of  Hedda  Gabler.  The  general  laying  out  of  this 
act  is  unexceptionable;  for  all  that  is  exhibited  would, 
sooner  or  later,  inevitably  happen.  But  the  tactics  are 
defective;  for,  yielding  to  the  irretardable  impulsion 
that  seemed  hurrying  the  play  to  its  catastrophe,  the 
author  has  permitted  Mrs.  Elvsted  and  Professor  Tes- 
man  to  begin  their  calm  work  of  collaboration  in  piecing 
together  Eilert  Lovborg's  posthumous  book  while  the 
body  of  their  ironically  martyred  friend  is  still  lying 
unburied  in  a  hospital.  This  is  a  mistake  in  tactics  that 
a  lesser  playwright  would  have  caught  at  once  and 
remedied;  for  a  lesser  playwright  would  have  known 
himself  unable  to  afford  the  risk  of  lying  about  life  at 
the  culminating  moment  of  a  drama. 

We  admire  Alexandre  Dumas,  fits,  for  his  mastery  of 
strategy, — particularly  in  the  laying  out  of  first  acts 
and  in  the  command  of  memorable  curtain-falls ;  but,  in 
the  minor  point  of  tactics,  even  so  great  an  artist  was 
excelled  by  so  clever  a  craftsman  as  Victorien  Sardou. 


48       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

Sardou  was  seldom  a  great  strategist,  for  he  loved 
the  theatre  more  than  life  and  preferred  invention  to 
imagination;  but,  precisely  because  of  this  restriction 
of  his  talent,  he  attained  an  eminence  as  a  theatrical 
tactician  which,  thus  far,  has  never  been  surpassed. 

If  we  turn  to  a  consideration  of  our  own  American 
drama  in  the  light  of  this  distinction,  we  shall  see  at 
once  that  the  majority  of  our  native  playwrights  are 
weak  in  strategy  but  strong  in  tactics.  The  life-work 
of  the  late  Clyde  Fitch  is  clearly  illustrative  of  this 
assumption.  Fitch  was  almost  inordinately  clever  in 
his  tactics.  He  could  always  expound  a  play  with  ease 
and  interest  by  the  aid  of  some  original  and  dexterous 
invention.  He  seemed  supremely  clever  in  delineating 
minor  characters,  and  in  inventing  means  by  which 
these  minor  characters  should  seem  to  have  a  finger 
in  determining  the  destiny  he  had  to  deal  with.  But, 
at  the  same  time,  he  nearly  always  failed  in  the  general 
laying  out  of  his  play.  He  could  not  draw  a  leading 
character  consistently  throughout  a  logical  succession 
of  four  acts.  Even  in  his  highest  efforts,  like  The 
Truth,  he  permitted  his  tactics  to  override  his  strategy 
and  allowed  a  big  dramatic  scheme  to  shatter  itself  into 
a  myriad  of  minor  clevernesses. 

The  same  merits  in  tactics  and  defects  in  strategy 
remain  apparent  in  the  most  typical  products  of  the 
American  drama  of  to-day.  It  would,  I  think,  be 
futile  to  deny  that  our  most  representative  playwright 
at  the  present  time  is  Mr.  George  M.  Cohan.  Mr. 
Cohan  and  the  growing  host  of  those  who  imitate  him 
have  mastered  the  tactics  of  the  theatre;  they  are 


STRATEGY  AND  TACTICS  49 

cleverer  than  Hauptmann,  more  inventive  than  Brieux ; 
but  none  of  them  has  yet  laid  out  a  play  with  the  serene 
supremacy  of  strategy  apparent  in  the  planning  of 
The  Weavers  or  The  Red  Robe. 

So  long  as  we  continue  to  fix  our  eyes  upon  the  thea- 
tre instead  of  allowing  them  to  wander  over  the  unlim- 
ited domain  of  life,  so  long  as  we  continue  to  value 
invention  more  dearly  than  imagination,  so  long  as  we 
continue  to  worship  immediate  expediency  in  preference 
to  untimely  and  eternal  truth,  we  shall  continue  to 
advance  in  tactics  and  to  retrograde  in  strategy;  we 
shall  continue  to  improve  the  technique  of  the  theatre, 
but  we  shall  contribute  nothing  to  the  technique  of  the 
drama. 

On  the  other  hand,  such  a  piece  as  The  Unchastened 
Woman,  by  Mr.  Louis  K.  Anspacher,  appears  at  the 
first  glance  more  like  a  European  drama  than  an  Amer- 
ican play ;  for  it  is  strong  in  strategy  and  weak  in 
tactics.  The  author  has  imagined  one  of  the  most  vital 
characters  that  have  appeared  in  the  American  drama 
for  a  long,  long  time:  his  heroine  steps  living  from  the 
limits  of  his  play  and  continues  her  existence  in  the  vast 
domain  of  life  at  large :  but  the  play  itself  in  which  she 
figures  is  far  less  clever  in  its  tactics  than  the  average 
composition  of  the  average  American  craftsman. 

Caroline  Knolys — as  this  memorable  heroine  is  called 
— reveals  a  family  resemblance  to  Hedda  Gabler;  but 
she  is  projected,  not  in  the  mood  of  tragedy,  but  in  the 
mood  of  sardonic  comedy.  Like  Hedda,  she  is  a  woman 
of  talent,  who,  finding  no  productive  exercise  for  her 
abilities,  uses  them  to  thwart  the  productivity  of  all  the 


50       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

people  with  whom  she  comes  in  contact.  Like  Hedda, 
also,  she  is  morally  a  coward,  and  impedes  herself  from 
the  commission  of  any  tangible  crime  because  of  a  fear 
of  the  consequences.  She  is  incapable  of  love;  but  she 
takes  delight  in  alluring  men  to  love  her,  for  the  sake 
of  having  a  finger  in  their  destinies  and  distressing  their 
sweethearts  or  their  wives.  She  has  ceased  all  marital 
relations  with  her  husband ;  but,  valuing  the  protection 
of  his  name,  she  carefully  avoids  the  commission  of  any 
act  which  might  make  it  possible  for  him  to  divorce  her. 
Meanwhile,  her  husband — a  much  more  normal  and  hon- 
orable being — has  established  a  relation  with  a  mis- 
tress ;  but  Caroline,  knowing  this,  refuses  to  divorce  her 
husband,  but  merely  holds  her  knowledge  as  a  sword  to 
threaten  him. 

The  character  of  this  despicable  and  fascinating 
heroine  is  studied  very  thoroughly ;  and  the  impression 
of  reality  conveyed  affords  sufficient  proof  of  the 
efficiency  of  the  author's  strategy.  But  neither  of  the 
two  stories  which  he  has  invented  as  frameworks  for 
this  central  figure  is  interesting  in  itself ;  and  the  tactics 
of  the  play  are  crude  and  blundering. 

As  an  example  of  the  author's  crudity  in  tactics,  the 
first  entrance  of  the  heroine  may  be  cited.  She  is  re- 
turning to  her  husband's  house  after  a  long  trip  abroad. 
We  are  told  that  she  has  become  involved  in  trouble  at 
the  dock  because  she  has  tried  to  smuggle  through  the 
customs  many  purchases  without  declaring  them  and 
has  attempted  to  bribe  a  Government  inspector.  The 
whole  incident  is  hashed  over  in  a  dialogue  between 
Caroline,  her  husband,  and  a  woman  friend  of  hers. 


STRATEGY  AND  TACTICS  51 

The  incident  itself  is  sufficiently  indicative  of  the  hero- 
ine's character ;  but  to  begin  the  exposition  of  so  promi- 
nent a  person  with  a  retrospective  narrative  of  an  inci- 
dent that  has  already  happened  off  the  stage  is  clearly 
a  mistake  in  tactics.  It  would  have  been  far  better  to 
allow  the  heroine  to  do  something,  in  the  sight  of  the 
audience,  which  was  equally  indicative  of  the  iniquity 
of  her  nature. 

This  initial  launching  of  the  heroine  is  followed  by 
a  passage  in  which  the  author  permits  her  to  sit  still 
while  her  husband,  at  considerable  length,  informs  her — 
and  incidentally  informs  the  audience — of  his  intimate 
opinion  of  her  character.  Here,  again,  we  note  a  fault 
in  tactics ;  for  surely  it  would  have  been  more  clever  to 
avoid  this  expository  passage  by  exhibiting  the  heroine 
in  the  self-explanatory  terms  of  action. 

In  conducting  both  the  second  act  and  the  third, 
Mr.  Anspacher  has  removed  from  the  stage  his  only 
really  interesting  character  several  minutes  before  the 
fall  of  the  conclusive  curtain  and  has  allowed  the  dia- 
logue to  straggle  on  to  an  annoying  anti-climax.  This 
is  a  mistake  in  tactics  which  a  mere  apprentice  to  the 
craft  of  making  plays  might  presumably  be  trusted  to 
avoid;  but  the  disconcerting  fact  remains  that,  though 
Mr.  Anspacher  is  comparatively  ineffective  in  his  tac- 
tics, he  is  surprisingly  efficient  in  the  larger  points  of 
strategy. 

Especially  praiseworthy,  for  example,  is  his  pro- 
cedure in  leaving  his  unchastened  woman  still  unchas- 
tened  at  the  end.  She  has  been  forced,  in  the  last  act, 
to  submit  to  an  unavoidable  humiliation ;  but,  at  her 


52       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

final  exit,  she  manages,  by  her  sheer  genius  for  creating 
mischief,  to  annihilate  the  victory  of  those  who  mo- 
mentarily have  triumphed  over  her.  To  conceive  and 
to  create  an  unpleasant  person  and  to  avoid  the  usual 
temptation  to  reform  this  person  before  the  final  cur- 
tain-fall is  an  achievement  in  sheer  strategy  which  has 
seldom  been  accomplished  in  our  native  drama.  The 
merits  of  this  play  are  large,  and  its  defects  are  little. 
Half  a  dozen  of  our  American  playwrights  might  have 
worked  the  pattern  out  more  cleverly ;  but  the  impor- 
tant and  preponderant  fact  remains  that  few,  if  any, 
of  these  other  tacticians  of  our  theatre  have  imagined 
and  created  so  true  a  character  as  Caroline  Knolys. 


VII 
PROPORTION  IN  THE  DRAMA 

EVERY  play  is  a  dramatization  of  a  story  that  covers 
a  larger  canvas  than  the  play  itself.  The  dramatist 
must  be  familiar  not  only  with  the  comparatively  few 
events  that  he  exhibits  on  the  stage,  but  also  with  the 
many  other  events  that  happen  off-stage  during  the 
course  of  the  action,  others  still  that  happen  between 
the  acts,  and  innumerable  others  that  are  assumed  to 
have  happened  before  the  play  began.  Considering  his 
story  as  a  whole,  the  playwright  must  select  his  par- 
ticular material  by  deciding  what  to  put  into  his  play 
and  what  to  leave  out  of  it ;  and  any  number  of  different 
plays  may  be  made  from  the  same  story  by  different 
selections  from  the  material  at  hand. 

Considering  the  entire  story  of  Hamlet,  for  instance, 
it  would  be  possible  to  make  an  interesting  play  in  which 
the  climax  should  be  the  seduction  of  Queen  Gertrude 
by  her  handsome  and  unscrupulous  brother-in-law,  and 
the  murder  of  the  king  by  Claudius  should  constitute 
the  catastrophe.  In  this  play,  the  young  prince  Ham- 
let, remaining  ignorant  of  what  was  going  on  about 
him,  would  play  but  a  minor  part  and  would  be  dra- 
matically interesting  only  as  a  potential  menace  to  the 
machinations  of  his  plausible  but  wicked  uncle.  Many 

53 


54       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

other  plays  might  be  selected  from  the  entire  drift  of 
narrative  from  which  Shakespeare  derived  the  specific 
dramatization  that  we  know  so  well;  and  it  is  by  no 
means  illogical  to  assume  that  the  same  great  drama- 
tist might  have  made  as  great  a  tragedy  of  one  of  these 
innumerable  other  hypothetic  plays. 

But  after  the  dramatist  has  made  a  definite  selection 
of  events  to  be  exhibited,  the  nature  of  his  play  will 
still  depend  on  the  sense  of  proportion  with  which  he 
develops  the  materials  selected.  What  characters, 
what  motives,  what  incidents  shall  he  emphasize,  and 
what  others  shall  he  merely  shadow  forth  in  the  dim 
limbo  of  his  background?  Suppose  the  dramatist  of 
Hamlet  to  have  decided  to  begin  his  play  after  the 
murder  of  the  king  and  to  end  it  with  the  retributive 
execution  of  the  murderer.  It  would  still  be  possible  to 
project  Claudius  as  the  central  and  most  interesting 
figure  in  the  tragedy.  He  might  be  exhibited  as  a  man 
self-tortured  by  the  gnawing  of  remorse,  harrowed  by 
an  ever-growing  doubt  of  the  security  of  his  assumed 
position,  wounded  to  the  quick  by  the  defection  of  his 
queen,  and  ultimately  welcoming  the  stroke  that  cut  the 
knot  intrinsicate  of  all  his  tortures.  In  a  dramatization 
so  conceived,  the  young  prince  Hamlet  would  once  more 
be  relegated  to  a  minor  role.  A  shift  in  the  proportions 
of  the  narrative  would  alter  the  entire  aspect  of  the 
tragedy. 

Whenever  we  go  to  a  play,  we  witness  only  one  of  a 
myriad  possible  dramatizations  of  the  entire  story  that 
the  playwright  has  imagined.  If  we  are  dissatisfied 
with  the  drama,  this  dissatisfaction  may  frequently  be 


PROPORTION  IN  THE  DRAMA  55 

traced  to  a  disagreement  with  the  playwright  concern- 
ing his  selection  of  material.  Often  we  wish  that  the 
author  had  begun  his  play  either  earlier  or  later  in  the 
general  procession  of  events  from  which  he  chose  his 
incidents ;  often  we  feel  that  much  that  we  have  seen 
might  better  have  been  assumed  to  happen  off  the  stage, 
and  that  certain  other  incidents  that  happened  off  the 
stage  would  have  thrilled  us  more  if  we  had  seen  them. 
But  even  more  frequently,  we  may  trace  our  dissatis- 
faction to  a  disagreement  with  the  playwright  con- 
cerning the  proportions  of  his  narrative.  We  wished 
to  see  more  of  certain  characters  and  less  of  others ;  we 
were  keenly  interested  in  certain  motives  which  he  only 
half  developed,  and  bored  by  certain  other  motives 
which  he  insisted  on  developing  in  full.  We  cared  more 
about  Laertes  than  Polonius — let  us  say — and  were 
disappointed  because  the  garrulous  old  man  was  given 
much  to  say  and  do  and  his  gallant  son  was  given 
comparatively  little. 

When  a  play  with  an  obviously  interesting  theme  fails 
to  hold  the  attention  and  to  satisfy  the  interest,  the 
fault  may  nearly  always  be  ascribed  to  some  error  of 
proportion.  Too  much  time  has  been  devoted  to  second- 
ary material,  too  little  to  material  that  at  the  moment 
seemed  more  worthy  of  attention.  The  serious  plot  of 
Much  Ado  About  Nothing,  for  example,  tends  to  bore 
the  audience,  because  they  have  grown  to  care  so  much 
for  Beatrice  and  Benedick  that  they  can  no  longer 
take  any  personal  interest  in  what  happens  to  Hero. 
When  M.  Rostand  began  the  composition  of  L'Aiglon, 
he  conceived  Flambeau  as  the  central  figure  of  the 


56       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

drama.  Later  in  the  course  of  composition,  the  young 
Due  de  Reichstadt  ran  away  with  the  play;  and 
L'Aiglon  became,  in  consequence,  a  vehicle  for  Sarah 
Bernhardt  instead  of  a  vehicle  for  Constant  Coquelin. 
M.  Rostand  was  right  in  his  ultimate  perception  that 
the  weak  son  of  a  strong  father  would  be  more  interest- 
ing to  the  public  that  a  vieux  grognard  a  grandes  mous- 
taches; and  an  obstinate  effort  to  keep  Flambeau  in  the 
center  of  the  stage  would  have  diminished  the  popu- 
larity of  the  play. 

In  handling  any  story,  the  dramatist  is  fairly  free 
to  select  the  incidents  to  be  exhibited  and  to  determine 
the  proportions  of  the  composition  he  has  chosen;  but 
there  are  always  two  exigencies  that  he  cannot  safely 
disregard.  The  first  of  these  is  covered  by  Sarcey's 
theory  of  the  scene  a  faire, — or  the  "  obligatory  scene," 
as  the  phrase  has  been  translated  by  Mr.  Archer.  An 
obligatory  scene  is  a  scene  that  the  public  has  been 
permitted  to  foresee  and  to  desire  from  the  progress  of 
the  action ;  and  such  a  scene  can  never  be  omitted  with- 
out a  consequent  dissatisfaction.  The  second  exigency 
is  that  the  dramatist  must  proportion  his  play  in 
agreement  with  the  instinctive  desire  of  the  audience. 
He  must  summarize  what  the  public  wishes  to  be  sum- 
marized, and  must  detail  what  the  public  wishes  to  be 
detailed;  and  he  must  not,  either  deliberately  or  in- 
advertently, antagonize  the  instinctive  desire  that  he 
has  awakened.  If  the  author  has  caused  the  public  to 
care  more  about  Shylock  than  about  any  other  person 
in  his  play,  it  becomes,  for  example,  a  dramaturgic 
error  to  leave  Shylock  out  of  the  last  act.  If  the  audi- 


PROPORTION  IN  THE  DRAMA  57 

ence  [as  may  be  doubted,  in  this  instance]  really  wants 
Charles  Surface  to  make  love  to  Maria,  it  becomes  a 
dramaturgic  error  to  omit  any  love-scene  between  the 
two.  When  Ruy  Bias  was  first  produced,  the  public  was 
delighted  with  a  minor  character,  the  shiftless  and 
rollicking  Don  Cesar  de  Bazan.  Thereupon,  Dennery, 
with  the  permission  of  Hugo,  made  this  character  the 
central  figure  of  a  second  melodrama,  in  which  the 
public  was  permitted  to  see  more  of  him. 

There  are  certain  characters  that  afflict  the  audience 
with  disappointment  whenever  they  leave  the  stage,  and 
there  are  certain  other  characters  that  afflict  the  audi- 
ence more  deeply  by  remaining  on  the  stage  and  con- 
tinuing to  talk;  and  the  distinction  between  the  two 
types  can  seldom  be  determined  before  a  play  has  been 
"  tried  out,"  with  the  assistance  of  some  sort  of  audi- 
ence. To  fight  against  the  popular  desire  in  the  matter 
of  proportion  is  to  fight  in  vain. 


VIII 
HARMONY  IN  PRESENTATION 

IT  is  seldom  that  we  receive  from  a  theatrical  per- 
formance an  impression  that  satisfies  our  sense  of 
harmony.  The  elements  that  go  into  the  making  of  an 
acted  play  are  so  many  and  so  diverse  that  it  is  very 
difficult  to  blend  them  all  into  a  composition  that  shall 
be  free  from  any  discord.  The  function  of  the  stage- 
director  has  often  been  compared  with  that  of  the 
leader  of  an  orchestra ;  but  this  comparison  makes  no 
record  of  the  fact  that  it  is  immeasurably  more  difficult 
to  produce  a  play  than  to  conduct  a  symphony.  What 
would  the  public  think  of  the  performance  of  a  sym- 
phony if  twenty  of  the  instruments  were  out  of  tune,  if 
half  a  dozen  of  the  violinists  played  in  different  keys  at 
once,  and  if  a  dozen  of  the  other  musicians  paid  no 
attention  to  the  tempo  of  the  leader?  Harsh  words 
would  undoubtedly  be  spoken ;  and  the  conductor  would 
be  permitted  to  resign.  Yet  an  impression  that  is  pre- 
cisely analogous  to  this  is  produced  by  more  than  half 
of  the  performances  in  the  leading  theatres  of  New 
York.  Why  is  it  that  the  public  tolerates  this  arrant 
lack  of  harmony?  One  reason  is  that  the  majority  of 
theatre-goers  never  notice  it ;  and  another,  and  a  better, 
reason  is  that  the  more  sensitive  minority  of  theatre- 

58 


HARMONY  IN  PRESENTATION  59 

goers  may  probably  suspect  how  very,  very  difficult — 
in  the  present  state  of  the  theatre  in  America — is  the 
task  with  which  the  stage-director  is  confronted. 

Suppose,  for  the  sake  of  illustration,  that  a  certain 
play  be  perfectly  constructed  and  perfectly  written. 
In  that  case,  the  final  work  of  art  has,  at  the  most,  been 
only  half  completed.  Next,  the  piece  must  be  perfectly 
cast :  that  is  to  say,  a  group  of  actors  must  be  tactfully 
selected,  each  of  whom  is  not  only  capable  of  playing 
his  own  part  in  conformity  with  the  author's  intention 
but  is  also  able  to  assist  all  the  other  actors  to  achieve 
the  best  possible  effect  with  the  parts  that  are  allotted 
to  them.  The  members  of  the  company  must  not  only 
act  well,  as  individuals,  but  they  must  also  act  together, 
as  contributors  to  a  collaborative  work  of  art.  A 
single  performance  that  is  out  of  key  may  disrupt  the 
harmony  of  the  entire  composition.  But,  supposing 
that  this  perfect  play  be  perfectly  cast  and  perfectly 
acted,  it  may  still  fail  of  its  effect  unless  it  be  perfectly 
staged.  A  red  curtain  hanging  behind  a  pink  evening 
gown,  a  misdirected  spot-light  that  casts  emphasis  upon 
an  insignificant  detail,  some  minor  incongruity  of  fur- 
niture, or  any  of  a  myriad  other  trivial  details  may 
introduce  a  note  of  discord  that  will  utterly  disrupt  the 
illusion  of  the  play. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  deny  that  the  average  per- 
formance in  New  York  is  less  harmonious  than  the 
average  performance  in  London  or  Paris  or  Berlin. 
The  main  reason,  of  course,  is  that  the  American  thea- 
tre is  conducted  with  a  less  sincere  regard  for  art  than 
the  theatres  of  the  foremost  European  nations.  But 


60       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

another  reason  should  be  mentioned  also,  in  justice  to 
the  half-dozen  American  stage-directors  who  really  care 
for  art  and  try  their  best  to  call  it  into  being.  This 
reason  is  that  our  stage  is  more  cosmopolitan  than  that 
of  any  European  country.  Nine-tenths  of  all  the  plays 
produced  in  France  are  set  in  France,  are  written  by 
French  authors,  and  are  acted  by  French  actors;  but 
only  a  bare  majority  of  the  plays  produced  in  America 
are  written  and  acted  by  Americans.  Our  stage  is  very 
hospitable  to  plays  from  other  lands.  Those  imported 
from  Great  Britain  are  usually  performed  for  us  by 
British  companies ;  but  all  other  European  plays  must 
be  translated  and  must  be  played  by  native  actors  who 
find  it  very  difficult  to  transform  themselves  into  French- 
men or  Germans  or  Norwegians.  But  not  only  are  our 
plays  selected  from  a  dozen  different  countries,  but  our 
actors,  also,  are  recruited  from  many  different  climes. 
We  have  upon  our  stage  many  American  actors  who 
always  talk  American  and  many  British  actors  who 
always  talk  British;  we  have  a  few  actors,  trained 
either  in  America  or  in  Great  Britain,  who  talk  the 
standard  language  which  betrays  no  locality  of 
origin, — that  rarely  heard  language  which  is  known  as 
English ;  and  we  have  several  foreign  actors  who  speak 
British  or  American  with  a  French  or  German  or  Rus- 
sian intonation.  From  such  heterogeneous  elements  as 
these  it  is  very  difficult  to  coordinate  a  harmonious 
performance. 

An  emphatic  contrast  to  our  own  discordant  efforts 
was  afforded  by  the  perfectly  harmonious  performance 
of  Change,  a  Welsh  play  that  was  acted  in  this  country 


HARMONY  IN  PRESENTATION  61 

in  1914  by  an  imported  company  of  Welsh  players. 
The  acting  of  this  company  was  so  simple  and  sincere, 
so  real  and  true,  that  many  of  the  newspaper  reviewers 
thought  that  it  was  not  acting  at  all  and  described  it  as 
"  amateurish."  It  is  rather  sad  to  remark  that,  in  the 
vocabulary  of  newspaper  reviewers,  this  charming  ad- 
jective has  lost  its  original  meaning  of  "  loverly." 

Change  was  the  first  work  of  a  new  dramatist  of 
decided  promise,  Mr.  J.  O.  Francis.  To  this  piece  was 
awarded  the  prize  offered  by  Lord  Howard  de  Walden 
for  the  best  Welsh  play  by  a  Welsh  author ;  and  it  was 
well  received  when  it  was  produced  by  the  Stage  Society 
at  the  Haymarket  Theatre  in  London.  It  was  not  well 
received  in  New  York.  Many  of  the  reviewers  com- 
plained because  the  characters,  being  Welsh,  did  not 
seem  to  be  American.  "  Why  should  we  take  any 
interest  in  Welsh  working-people?",  was  their  remark. 
Even  so,  many  Americans  have  wondered  why  the  late 
J.  Pierpont  Morgan  should  have  taken  any  interest  in 
Raphael  and  Rembrandt, — neither  of  whom  ever 
painted  a  tired  business  man. 

Another  complaint  that  was  registered  against  this 
play  was — to  state  it  in  the  clearest  terms — that  the 
plot  was  less  important  than  the  characters  and  the 
action  was  less  interesting  than  the  dialogue.  One 
might  as  well  complain  of  Keats,  because  poetry  meant 
more  to  him  than  medicine.  Doubtless  many  an  apoth- 
ecary would  look  upon  the  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn  as  a 
truant  waste  of  time;  but  it  is  not  necessary  to  con- 
sider art  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  apothecary.  It 
is  the  first  principle  of  criticism  that  a  work  of  art 


62       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

should  be  judged  in  accordance  with  the  intention  of 
the  artist.  In  Change,  this  new  writer,  Mr.  J.  O. 
Francis,  allied  himself  deliberately  with  that  already 
well-established  school  of  British  realists  who  set  char- 
acter above  plot  and  dialogue  above  action.  A  man  is 
not  to  be  sneered  at  because  he  chooses  to  set  to  work 
in  accordance  with  the  principles  of  Stanley  Houghton, 
John  Galsworthy,  Githa  Sowerby,  and  St.  John  Ervine, 
all  of  whom  have  written  great  plays;  nor  is  he  to  be 
condemned  for  his  evident  unwillingness  to  insert  a 
scene  from  Sardou  into  the  fabric  of  his  drama. 

What  Mr.  Francis  gave  us  was  a  sincere  and  sympa- 
thetic study  of  a  dozen  people,  each  of  whom  had  a 
mind  of  his  own,  and  all  of  whom  were  worth  knowing. 
Their  interrelations  with  each  other  resulted  inevitably 
in  a  crisis  which,  though  not  objectively  theatrical,  was 
deeply  and  poignantly  dramatic.  The  dialogue  was  a 
luxury  to  listen  to, — it  was  so  absolutely  real,  so  simply 
yet  so  eloquently  human. 

The  theme  of  this  play  is  the  tragedy  that  results 
from  the  distressing  fact  that  the  elder  and  the  younger 
generations  can  never  understand  each  other.  This 
theme  has  frequently  been  discussed  in  the  theatre  in 
the  last  few  years ;  but  it  is  none  the  less  new  on  that 
account,  because  there  can  be  nothing  either  new  or  old 
about  a  theme  which  is  eternal.  The  special  poignancy 
of  Change  arises  from  the  fact  that,  though  the  author 
stands  apparently  on  the  side  of  the  younger  genera- 
tion, he  has  been  scrupulously  fair  to  the  older  people 
of  the  play  and  has  presented  their  case  with  a  sympa- 
thetic insight  which  is  utterly  unprejudiced. 


HARMONY  IN  PRESENTATION  63 

It  is  always  a  concession  to  surrender  to  the  mood  of 
impatience ;  but  it  is  difficult  not  to  be  impatient  with 
that  apparently  incurable  provincialism  of  our  review- 
ers and  our  public  which  resulted  in  the  failure  of  this 
play.  Change  was  a  beautiful  composition,  and  it  was 
beautifully  acted;  for  Beauty  is  Truth,  Truth  Beauty 
— whatever  the  apothecaries  say. 


IX 
HIGH  COMEDY  IN  AMERICA 

No  other  type  of  drama  is  so  rarely  written  in 
America  as  that  intelligently  entertaining  type  which 
is  variously  known  as  High  Comedy,  or  Comedy  of 
Manners,  or  Artificial  Comedy.  The  purpose  of  High 
Comedy  is  to  satirize  the  social  customs  of  the  upper 
classes,  to  arraign  with  wit  the  foibles  of  the  aristoc- 
racy. It  must  conform  to  the  requirement  of  comedy 
that  the  plot  shall  never  stiffen  into  melodrama  nor 
slacken  into  farce,  and  it  must  attain  the  end  of  enter- 
tainment less  by  emphasis  of  incident  than  by  the  nice 
analysis  of  character.  The  medium  of  Artificial  Com- 
edy is  conversation ;  it  dallies  with  the  smart  sayings 
of  smart  people;  and  the  dialogue  need  not  be  strictly 
natural,  provided  that  it  be  continuously  witty.  The 
world  of  High  Comedy  is  a  world  in  which  what  people 
say  is  immeasurably  more  important  than  what  they 
do,  or  even  what  they  are.  It  is  an  airy  and  a  careless 
world,  more  brilliant,  more  graceful,  more  gay,  more 
irresponsible  than  the  world  of  actuality.  The  people 
of  High  Comedy  awaken  thoughtful  laughter ;  but  they 
do  not  touch  the  heart  nor  stir  the  soul.  By  that  token 
they  are  only  partly  real.  They  have  merely  heads, 
not  hearts, — intelligence  and  not  emotion.  They  stimu- 

64 


HIGH  COMEDY  IN  AMERICA  65 

late  an  intellect  at  play,  without  stirring  up  the  deeper 
sympathies.  For  this  reason  High  Comedy  is  more 
difficult  to  write  than  the  sterner  types  of  drama.  It 
cannot  strike  below  the  belt,  like  melodrama,  nor,  like 
tragedy,  attack  the  vital  organs  of  compassion ;  it  can 
only  deliver  light  blows  upon  the  forehead;  it  must 
always  hit  above  the  eyes. 

In  the  genealogy  of  English  drama,  High  Comedy  can 
boast  an  ancient  and  an  honorable  lineage.  It  was  in- 
troduced in  England  in  1664  by  Sir  George  Etheredge, 
who  imported  it  from  France ;  for,  during  that  exile  of 
all  gentlemen  to  Paris  which  is  known  in  history  as  the 
Protectorate  of  Cromwell,  Etheredge  had  studied  man- 
ners at  the  French  court  and  the  Comedy  of  Manners 
at  the  theatre  of  Moliere.  He  was  soon  followed  by 
that  great  quartet  of  gentlemanly  wits,  composed  of 
Wycherley,  Congreve,  Vanburgh,  and  Farquhar,  who 
carried  English  comedy  to  unexampled  heights  of  bril- 
liancy and  irresponsibility.  Unfortunately  for  their 
fame,  the  work  of  these  masters  was  tinged  with  an 
utter  recklessness  of  all  morality,  at  which  later  genera- 
tions have  grown  to  look  askance.  Of  this  tendency — 
as  Charles  Lamb  has  defined  it — "  to  take  an  airing 
beyond  the  diocese  of  the  strict  conscience,"  High  Com- 
edy was  purged  by  Colley  Gibber  and  Sir  Richard 
Steele,  who  introduced,  however,  the  infra-intellectual 
alloy  of  sentiment.  Then  came  the  richer  period  of  the 
genial  Goldsmith  and  the  incomparable  Sheridan,  which 
gave  us  the  greatest  of  all  Comedies  of  Manners,  The 
School  for  Scandal.  Charles  Lamb,  who  had  seen  this 
masterpiece  performed  by  many  of  the  members  of  the 


66       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

original  company,  lived  long  enough  to  pen  the  solemn 
sentence, — "  The  Artificial  Comedy,  or  Comedy  of  Man- 
ners, is  quite  extinct  on  our  stage."  But  even  while 
this  requiem  was  being  written,  the  type  was  being  kept 
alive  in  occasional  comedies  like  the  London  Assurance 
of  Dion  Boucicault ;  and,  late  in  the  nineteenth  century, 
it  was  brilliantly  revivified  by  the  clever  and  witty  Oscar 
Wilde  and  the  more  humorous  and  human  Mr.  Henry 
Arthur  Jones. 

It  is  the  privilege  of  American  writers  to  share  with 
their  British  cousins  the  common  heritage  of  English 
literature,  and  most  offshoots  of  the  ancient  stock  have 
been  successfully  transplanted  overseas ;  but  there  are 
certain  of  these  offshoots  which  thus  far  have  failed  to 
flourish  in  America  because  we  have  had  so  little  time, 
comparatively,  to  till  our  literary  soil.  Our  native 
drama  is  already  thoroughly  alive  in  respect  to  melo- 
drama and  to  farce ;  but  it  is  not  yet  thoroughly  alive 
in  respect  to  High  Comedy. 

This  fact,  however,  is  not  at  all  surprising ;  for  High 
Comedy  is  the  last  of  all  dramatic  types  to  be  estab- 
lished in  the  art  of  any  nation.  It  has  frequently  been 
said  that  it  takes  three  generations  to  make  a  gentle- 
man ;  but  it  takes  more  than  three  to  develop  a  Comedy 
of  Manners.  Manners  do  not  become  a  theme  for  satire 
until  they  have  been  crystallized  into  a  code ;  and,  to 
laugh  politely,  a  playwright  must  have  an  aristocracy 
to  laugh  at.  To  all  intents  and  purposes,  the  United 
States  is  still  a  country  without  an  upper  class ;  and 
the  chaos  of  our  social  system  precludes  the  possibility 
of  social  satire. 


HIGH  COMEDY  IN  AMERICA  67 

Before  we  can  develop  a  Comedy  of  Manners  in 
America,  we  must  first  develop  an  aristocracy  to  satir- 
ize. At  present  our  few  aristocrats  are  cosmopolitans ; 
and,  if  they  should  be  mirrored  on  the  stage,  our  audi- 
ence would  think  them  un-American.  For  not  only  do 
we  lack  the  subject-matter  for  High  Comedy,  but  we 
also  lack  an  audience  that  is  educated  to  appreciate  it. 
Compare  the  clientele  of  the  Criterion  Theatre  in  Lon- 
don with  the  clientele  of  any  of  our  theatres  on  Broad- 
way. Our  American  audience  is  more  heterogeneous, 
more  democratic,  and  possibly  more  human;  but  it  is 
certainly  less  cultivated,  less  refined.  It  is  composed 
for  the  most  part  of  the  sort  of  people  who  are  em- 
barrassed by  good  breeding  and  who  consider  it  an 
affectation  to  pronounce  the  English  language  prop- 
erly. It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that — as  Mr. 
Walter  Prichard  Eaton  has  pithily  remarked — most  of 
our  American  comedies  must  be  classed  as  Comedies  of 
Bad  Manners.  We  laugh  uproariously  at  impoliteness 
on  our  stage,  because  we  have  not  yet  learned  to  laugh 
delicately  at  politeness.  We  are  amused  at  the  eccen- 
tricities of  bad  behavior,  because  we  have  not  yet 
learned  to  be  amused  at  the  eccentricities  of  good 
behavior.  We  are  still  in  the  stage  of  learning  how  to 
laugh,  because  we  are  still  in  the  stage  of  learning  how 
to  live. 

There  are  very  few  ladies  and  gentlemen  in  the 
American  drama, — there  are  none,  for  instance,  in  the 
very  popular  and  thoroughly  representative  plays  of 
Mr.  George  M.  Cohan ;  but  the  primary  reason  is  that 
there  are  very  few  ladies  and  gentlemen  in  the  American 


68       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

audience,  and  the  secondary  reason  is  that  there  are 
very  few  ladies  and  gentlemen  in  American  life.  It 
would  not  be  fair  to  blame  our  native  dramatists  for  the 
dearth  of  High  Comedy  in  America.  Bronson  Howard, 
in  the  first  generation,  and  Clyde  Fitch,  in  the  second, 
strove  earnestly  to  give  us  a  native  Comedy  of  Man- 
ners ;  but  their  successors  in  the  present  generation 
have,  for  the  most  part,  given  up  the  difficult  endeavor. 
It  is  a  thankless  task  to  write  about  aristocrats  for  an 
audience  that  is  unprepared  to  recognize  them,  and  to 
search  for  subject-matter  for  a  Comedy  of  Manners  in 
a  country  that  is  still  a  little  proud  of  the  misfortune 
that  it  has  no  upper  class. 

For  these  reasons,  the  achievement  of  a  genuine 
American  High  Comedy  should  be  celebrated  with 
especial  praise.  The  New  York  Idea,  by  Mr.  Langdon 
Mitchell,  is  perhaps  the  only  play  of  American  author- 
ship which  conforms  to  all  the  requirements  and  ex- 
hibits all  the  characteristics  of  the  traditional  Comedy 
of  Manners.  There  is  only  enough  action  to  keep  the 
characters  conversing;  and  this  action  is  never  serious 
enough  to  stir  the  deeper  sympathies.  The  characters 
are  airily  intelligent;  and  while  their  levity  precludes 
them  from  ever  lifting  the  play  to  any  mood  more 
serious  than  that  of  comedy,  their  intelligence  prevents 
them  from  allowing  it  to  lapse  to  farce.  All  the  char- 
acters are  deftly  drawn ;  and  every  one  of  them  is  witty. 
The  dialogue  is,  from  first  to  last,  unfalteringly  bril- 
liant; and,  while  it  never  calls  forth  the  loud  guffaw 
that  speaks  the  vacant-minded  audience,  it  is  continu- 
ously accompanied  by  a  ripple  of  delighted  laughter. 


HIGH  COMEDY  IN  AMERICA  69 

The  New  York  Idea  is  a  satire  of  the  tendency  of  a 
certain  section  of  American  society  to  indulge  unduly 
in  the  inspiriting  adventure  of  divorce.  Cynthia  Kars- 
lake  really  loves  her  husband ;  but  she  has  divorced  him 
in  a  moment  of  pique  and  has  become  engaged  to  the 
stolid  Phillip  Phillimore.  Thereupon  Karslake  pro- 
ceeds to  make  himself  good-naturedly  annoying  by 
openly  making  love  to  the  divorced  wife  of  Phillimore. 
Cynthia  is  stimulated  by  the  sting  of  jealousy  to  realize 
her  love  for  the  husband  she  has  lightly  tossed  away; 
and,  at  the  very  moment  when  her  marriage  to  Philli- 
more is  about  to  be  pronounced,  she  balks  at  the  cere- 
mony, and  flees  from  Phillimore  to  become  reconciled 
with  Karslake.  The  former  Mrs.  Phillimore  ultimately 
marries  Sir  Wilfred  Gates-Darby,  a  witty  Englishman 
who,  throughout  the  play,  has  made  love  to  both  the 
women  and  announced  to  each  of  them  that  the  other 
is  his  second  choice. 

The  New  York  Idea  was  first  produced  in  1906  by 
Mrs.  Fiske,  and  was  revived  nine  years  later  by  Miss 
Grace  George.  Its  brilliancy  has  not  been  dimmed  by 
the  decade  that  has  passed  since  the  time  when  it  was 
written;  and  in  that  decade  no  other  High  Comedy  of 
American  authorship  has  been  brought  forth  to  rival  it 
in  excellence.  It  is  not  only  a  good  play  for  the  theatre, 
but  a  good  play  for  the  library  as  well;  for  it  attains 
that  tone  of  literary  distinction  which  is  very  rarely 
reached  in  our  plays  of  native  authorship. 


THE  GEORGE  M.  COHAN  SCHOOL  OF 
PLAYWRIGHTS 

ANYBODY  who  is  seriously  interested  in  the  develop- 
ment of  a  native  drama  in  America  must  devote  par- 
ticular attention  to  the  work  of  George  M.  Cohan,  not 
merely  because  of  the  merit  of  his  plays,  but  even  more 
because  of  his  extremely  potent  influence  over  a  con- 
stantly growing  group  of  younger  writers.  We  have 
had  American  playwrights  in  the  past  who  were  su- 
perior to  Mr.  Cohan — Clyde  Fitch,  for  instance,  and 
Augustus  Thomas  at  his  best — but  none  of  these  has 
founded  what  might  be  called  a  school,  nor  developed  a 
formula  for  making  plays  that  can  be  used  successfully 
by  many  men  less  gifted  than  himself. 

In  the  last  half-dozen  years,  a  clear  majority  of  all 
the  plays  of  native  authorship  that  have  been  most 
popular  upon  our  stage  have  shown  a  family  resem- 
blance to  each  other ;  and  the  formula  of  Mr.  Cohan  is 
undeniably  the  father  of  the  family.  This  fact  has 
been  particularly  evident  in  the  case  of  those  plays 
which  have  been  sufficiently  successful  to  be  exported 
from  New  York  to  London ;  so  that,  in  the  British  capi- 
tal, the  two  adjectives  "  American "  and  "  Cohan- 
esque  "  have  lately  come  to  seem  synonymous.  To  our 

70 


THE  GEORGE  M.  COHAN  SCHOOL        71 

cousins  overseas,  the  label  "  M»de  in  America  "  conjures 
up  no  image  of  The  Great  Divide  or  Kindling  or  The 
Scarecrow  or  The  Witching  Hour  or  The  Truth;  it 
suggests,  instead,  a  play  by  Mr.  Cohan  or  by  any  of 
the  growing  group  who  follow  in  his  footsteps. 

In  any  ultimate  history  of  the  American  drama,  the 
chapter  devoted  to  these  current  years  must  bear  the 
name  of  Mr.  Cohan  in  its  caption.  Whatever  verdict 
may  be  reached  in  a  final  summing  up  of  the  merits  and 
demerits  of  his  work,  our  hypothetical  historian  will 
not  be  able  to  deny  that  Mr.  Cohan  is  the  most  repre- 
sentative American  dramatist  of  the  present  period. 
He  is  known  to  be  a  very  modest  man,  and  it  may  be 
doubted  that  he  has  ever  thought  of  himself  as  the 
founder  and  the  leader  of  a  school ;  but  his  influence  is 
evident  in  nearly  all  the  plays  which  at  present  are 
enjoyed  by  the  public  and  are  praised  by  the  critics 
because  of  certain  qualities  which  have  come  to  be 
regarded  as  "  typically  American." 

It  is  necessary  for  the  critic,  therefore,  to  inquire 
what  is  meant  by  a  play  that  is  "  typically  American," 
or,  to  use  the  other  label,  "  Cohanesque."  What  is  Mr. 
Cohan's  formula  for  making  plays — that  magic  formula 
which  many  other  authors  have  accepted  as  an  "  open 
sesame  "  to  fame  and  fortune?  The  recipe  is  really 
very  simple.  The  hero  is  a  young  man  who,  in  the  first 
act,  is  exhibited  as  down  and  out,  or  at  least  at  a  low 
ebb  of  his  fortunes,  because  luck  has  been  against 
him,  or  because  he  has  made  a  mess  of  his  own 
life  by  indulging  certain  weaknesses  or  vices.  Toward 
the  end  of  this  first  act,  he  conceives  a  daring  and 


hazardous  scheme  for  making  an  incalculable  for- 
tune at  the  expense  of  a  public  which  is  assumed  to  be 
easily  gullible;  or  else  this  scheme  is  suggested  to  him 
by  a  friend,  or  imposed  upon  him  by  the  drift  of  circum- 
stances. In  the  second  act,  the  hero  starts  out  to  win 
his  way  in  the  world  by  the  impetus  of  this  adventur- 
ous scheme.  In  intention  he  is  at  first  dishonest,  or  at 
least  not  entirely  decided  in  his  ideas  of  right  and 
wrong;  but,  as  his  scheme  begins  to  work,  he  finds  it 
more  profitable  to  play  the  game  straight  than  to  play 
it  crooked,  and  is  converted  to  probity  by  the  unfore- 
seen success  of  a  project  which  he  had  expected  to  be 
a  little  dangerous.  By  the  time  the  last  act  is  reached, 
the  hero  has  made  a  fortune  not  only  for  himself  but 
also  for  many  minor  characters  whom  he  had  consid- 
ered as  little  more  than  fools  when  they  gave  their  faith 
to  his  project  at  the  time  when  it  was  launched.  The 
boom  which  he  has  brought  about  results  in  unprece- 
dented prosperity  for  an  entire  town ;  and  the  hero 
who  began  life  as  a  failure  lives  happily  forever  after 
as  a  captain  of  success. 

This  summary — though  a  little  abstract — might  be 
employed  by  any  critic  of  the  drama  in  reviewing  such 
plays  by  Mr.  Cohan  as  Get-Rich-Quick  Wallingford, 
Broadway  Jones,  and  Hit-the-Trail  Holltday,  or  such 
plays  by  other  authors  as  The  Fortune  Hunter,  Ready 
Money,  It  Pays  to  Advertise,  and  many  others  which 
might  with  equal  pertinence  be  mentioned.  The  essen- 
tial element  in  the  formula  is  that  the  play  must  offer 
a  farcical  encomium  upon  the  subject  of  success  in  life. 
The  hero,  who,  in  the  first  act,  is  regarded,  and  regards 


THE  GEORGE  M.  COHAN  SCHOOL        73 

himself,  as  a  hopeless  failure,  must  ultimately  make  a 
fortune  for  himself,  and  for  many  other  people  who 
rather  foolishly  believe  in  him,  by  putting  into  practice 
some  preposterously  imaginative  scheme.  The  "  typi- 
cally American "  quality  of  the  play  arises  from  the 
fact  that  to  imagine  the  preposterous  is  the  particular 
achievement  of  American  humor  that  is  at  once  most 
humorous  and  most  American.  In  this  particular 
achievement  Mr.  Cohan  has  somehow  managed  to  ac- 
cept the  mantle  of  such  immortal  American  humorists 
as  Benjamin  Franklin  and  Mark  Twain,  although  it  is 
by  no  means  inconceivable  that  he  may  be  unfamiliar 
with  their  writings. 

The  success  of  the  Cohan  formula  upon  our  stage 
is  rather  surprising,  in  view  of  certain  theories  which 
always  heretofore  have  been  accepted  by  commentators 
on  the  drama.  It  has  been  assumed,  for  instance, 
through  uncounted  centuries,  that  no  play  can  ever  be 
successful  without  a  love-story ;  yet  there  is  not  a  single 
love-scene  in  any  of  Mr.  Cohan's  plays.  The  hero  may 
marry  the  heroine  at  the  conclusion  of  the  drama ;  but 
he  has  never  made  love  to  her  at  any  moment  while  the 
action  was  in  progress.  It  has  also  been  assumed  by 
recent  critics  that  no  modern  drama  can  succeed  unless 
it  interests  primarily  the  female  section  of  the  public, 
since  the  majority  of  the  patrons  of  the  contemporary 
theatre  is  made  up  of  women  and  their  escorts,  and  that 
the  proper  subject  of  successful  modern  drama  is, 
therefore,  an  analysis  of  femininity;  but  Mr.  Cohan's 
plays  are  written  frankly  for  an  audience  of  men,  and 
deal  almost  entirely  with  matters  in  which  only  male 


74       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

characters  are  involved.  He  has  created  a  hundred 
living  men,  but  not  a  single  living  woman ;  and  his  suc- 
cess seems  all  the  more  remarkable  when  we  remember 
that  he  has  never  made  a  conscious  or  deliberate  appeal 
to  the  women  in  his  audience. 

A  closer  examination  of  the  Cohan  formula  will  lead 
us  to  evaluate  the  merits  and  the  defects  of  the  repre- 
sentative American  drama  of  the  present  period.  In 
respect  to  characterization,  this  drama  is  rich  in  quaint 
and  curious  minor  parts,  but  is  poor  in  leading  parts 
with  leading  motives.  Mr.  Cohan  and  his  followers  have 
given  us  a  galaxy  of  minor  characters  that  may  be 
remembered  with  delight  for  their  truthful  tallying  with 
nature ;  but  they  have  given  us  no  single  figure  of  a  hero 
or  a  heroine  who  can  be  regarded  as  sufficiently  alive 
and  real  to  step  easily  and  boldly  from  the  framework 
of  the  play  in  which  they  figure  into  the  immortal 
regions  of  imaginative  memory. 

In  respect  to  plot,  Mr.  Cohan  and  his  followers  are 
exceedingly  adept.  They  excel  in  bustle  and  in  move- 
ment. Something  seems  always  to  be  happening  upon 
the  stage ;  and  the  entrances  and  exits  of  the  actors  aro 
deftly  timed  to  attain  the  maximum  of  theatrical  effect. 
At  times  the  deeper  possibilities  of  dramatic  tension 
are  sacrificed  to  sustain  this  superficial  hurrying  to  and 
fro ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  there  are  no  waste  moments, 
or  empty  places,  in  the  play. 

In  respect  to  dialogue,  these  plays  are  written  in  a 
curious  vernacular, — the  special  slang  of  the  theatre- 
goers of  Broadway.  The  scene  is  usually  set,  perforce, 
in  some  little  city  of  New  England  or  the  Middle  West ; 


THE  GEORGE  M.  COHAN  SCHOOL        75 

and  it  is,  in  actuality,  inconceivable  that  the  sheltered 
inhabitants  of  these  localities  should  be  familiar  with 
the  latest  turns  of  slang  that  are  current  in  Times 
Square.  Mr.  Cohan's  dialogue  is  just  as  artificial  as 
the  rigid  rhetoric  of  Mr.  Percy  MacKaye ;  but  it  sounds 
colloquial  to  the  public  that  he  writes  for,  and  it 
awakens  easily  the  confidential  laughter  that  arises 
from  the  quick  response  of  recognition. 

Of  the  technical  merits  of  Mr.  Cohan's  plays  it  would 
be  superfluous  to  speak  in  praise.  Few  recent  enter- 
tainments, for  example,  have  been  more  intelligently 
planned  than  Seven  Keys  to  Baldpate.  Mr.  Cohan  is 
gifted  with  a  keen  sense  of  theatrical  effect,  a  remark- 
able appreciation  of  the  efficiency  of  certain  actors, 
and  a  positive  genius  for  predicting  in  advance  the  pre- 
dilections of  the  public.  But  is  his  "  typically  Amer- 
ican "  drama  a  great  drama ;  and  is  it,  after  all,  re- 
sumptive of  America?  .  .  .  These  questions  must  be 
asked  by  anybody  who  is  seriously  interested  in  the 
development  of  a  native  drama  in  this  country. 

In  answer  to  these  questions,  it  should  be  noted  first 
of  all  that,  in  all  the  plays  that  have  been  written  by 
Mr.  Cohan  and  his  emulators,  there  is  no  single  char- 
acter that  may  be  called  a  lady  or  a  gentleman,  in  the 
sense  in  which  these  words  are  understood  in  England. 
But  are  there,  in  America,  no  ladies  and  no  gentle- 
men? .  .  .  Furthermore,  there  is  not  a  single  charac- 
ter that  may  be  called  cultured,  or  even  especially  well 
educated.  But  are  there  no  educated  people  in  Amer- 
ica? .  .  .  No  character  can  truthfully  be  said  to  talk 
the  English  language,  since  everybody  talks  the  special 


76       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

language  of  Broadway.  But  is  English  a  dead  lan- 
guage in  America?  .  .  .  We  are  taken  to  a  world 
where  there  is  no  such  thing  as  love,  nor  religion,  nor 
idealism,  nor  self-sacrifice,  but  only  the  will  to  succeed 
and  the  impulse  to  get  the  better  of  one's  neighbor.  But 
are  the  higher  motives  actually  absent  from  the  Amer- 
ican imagination?  .  .  . 

It  appears  that,  in  the  current  life  of  present-day 
America,  there  are  many  noble  motives  which  have 
remained  untouched  and  unexploited  by  Mr.  Cohan  and 
his  school.  The  adjective  "  American  "  has  not  yet 
really  shriveled  to  identity  with  the  adjective  "  Cohan- 
esque."  Though  Mr.  Cohan  rules  our  stage  at  present, 
some  greater  leader  of  our  native  drama  must,  in  future 
years,  arise.  The  enormous  territory  of  our  vast  and 
dreaming  life  is  still  awaiting  a  profound  and  great 
explorer.  How  long,  the  critic  wonders,  must  we  wait 
until  some  huge  Columbus  of  the  theatre  shall  achieve, 
for  the  dramatic  art,  an  ultimate  discovery  of  America? 


XI 

YOUTH  AND  AGE  IN  THE  DRAMA 

ONE  of  the  most  pleasing  plays  of  American  author- 
ship in  recent  years  is  Old  Lady  31,  by  Rachel  Crothers. 
Miss  Crothers,  who  has  long  been  noted  for  her  mastery 
of  the  delicate  art  of  dialogue,  has  written  many  plays 
of  promise  in  the  past;  but  this  latest  piece  is  easily 
the  best  of  her  productions.  It  is  poignantly  beautiful, 
for  the  simple  reason  that  it  is  penetratingly  true. 
Occasionally,  in  the  past,  Miss  Crothers  has  shown  a 
regrettable  tendency  to  insist  upon  her  own  extremely 
feminine  opinions  about  life, — as  in  A  Man's  World 
and  Ourselves,  to  cite  a  couple  of  examples;  but,  in 
Old  Lady  31,  she  shows  us  life  itself,  relieved  from  the 
intrusion  of  opinion — and  we  stand  up  and  remove  our 
hats,  as  is  our  custom  in  the  shining  presence  of  reality. 
It  would  be  futile  to  deny  the  success  of  this  remark- 
able production,  either  as  a  work  of  art  or  as  a  popu- 
lar entertainment.  The  casual  and  careless  theatre- 
goer has  gone  to  see  it — has  wept  and  laughed,  in  the 
wonder-working  mood  of  happy  pathos,  or  pathetic 
happiness — and  has  come  away  from  the  performance 
a  sadder  and  a  wiser  [and,  in  consequence,  of  course,  a 
better]  man.  Yet  the  interesting  fact  remains  to  be 
discussed  that  Miss  Crothers  has  succeeded  with  a  sub- 

77 


ject-matter  that,  for  many  years,  has  been  tabooed  as 
dangerous  by  nearly  all  of  our  theatrical  purveyors 
whose  habit  is  to  feel  the  pulse  of  the  public ;  for  the 
milieu  of  the  story  is  an  old  ladies'  home,  and  the  theme 
of  the  play  is  the  psychology  of  several  superannuated 
people  whose  active  lives  have  long  been  past  and  done 
with.  The  appeal  of  youth  to  youth — which  most  of 
our  commercial  managers  insist  upon  as  a  necessary 
requisite  to  popularity — is  singularly  absent.  The 
popular  success  of  Old  Lady  31  reopens  the  entire  con- 
troversy that  concerns  the  question  whether  or  not  the 
dramatist  can  ever  please  the  public  with  an  essay  in 
appreciation  of  old  age. 

The  project  of  Old  Lady  31  was  suggested  to  Miss 
Crothers  by  a  novel  that  was  written  by  the  late  Louise 
Forsslund.  The  story  follows  the  declining  fortunes 
of  a  pair  of  aged  lovers  whose  affection  for  each  other 
has  grown  "  durable  from  the  daily  dust  of  life."  Abe 
and  Angie  are  very  old ;  and  they  have  been  constrained 
to  spend  the  little  money  they  had  scraped  together, 
through  the  savings  of  a  life-time,  against  "  the  years 
that  gently  bend  us  to  the  ground."  But,  by  selling 
their  little  cottage  and  their  furniture  and  nearly  all 
their  pitiful  and  dear  belongings,  they  have  raised  the 
hundred  dollars  that  is  requisite  to  secure  admittance 
for  Angie  to  the  Old  Ladies'  Home.  Abe,  on  his  part, 
will  have  to  subsist  on  charity  at  the  Poor  Farm,  five 
miles  away.  These  simple  facts  are  set  forth  in  a  pro- 
logue, which  shows  the  two  old  people  saying  a  sad  last 
farewell  to  the  little  cottage  which  has  been  their  home 
for  many  years. 


YOUTH  AND  AGE  IN  THE  DRAMA   79 

The  first  act  discloses  the  veranda  of  the  Old  Ladies' 
Home,  and  introduces  us  to  several  superannuated 
women  who  are  gossiping  in  rocking-chairs  concerning 
the  expected  arrival  of  Angie.  These  women,  who  no 
longer  have  anything  to  do  in  life,  have  all  the  more  to 
think  and  feel  and  say.  But  something  unforeseen 
attacks  and  overwhelms  them  when  Angie  arrives,  ac- 
companied by  Abe,  who  is  trundling  along  her  poor 
belongings  on  a  hand-cart.  Abe  tries  to  say  good-bye 
to  Angie  and  to  set  forth  smilingly  afoot  for  the  Poor 
Farm  five  miles  away;  but  this  attempted  parting  is 
more  than  the  old  women  at  the  Home  can  bear  to  see. 
When  Troy  fell,  the  followers  of  JEneas  emitted  the 
immortal  phrase,  "  We  have  been  Trojans — Troy  has 
been  " ;  and  of  these  faded  wrecks  in  rocking-chairs  it 
might  be  said,  with  equal  pathos,  "  They  have  been 
women."  In  this  moment,  they  remember ;  and — recall- 
ing the  keen  life  they  used  to  know — they  insist  that 
Abe  shall  not  be  parted  from  his  Angie,  but  shall  be 
received  surreptitiously  into  the  Home  as  Old  Lady  31. 

The  unaccustomed  presence  of  a  man  in  the  house 
stirs  all  the  thirty  women  to  a  vivid  recollection  of 
those  feelings  which,  in  Wordsworth's  phrase,  may  be 
described  as  "  intimations  of  immortality."  The  mem- 
ory of  sex  survives  its  function ;  and  a  woman  is  no  less 
a  woman  though  she  may  be  seventy  or  eighty  or  ninety 
years  of  age.  The  immediate  effect  of  the  reception  of 
Abe  into  the  Old  Ladies'  Home  is  to  accelerate  the 
coursing  of  the  blood  in  all  the  thirty  inmates,  so  that 
they  become  again  in  spirit  the  mothers,  sisters,  wives, 
and  sweethearts  that  they  used  to  be.  Like  bees  about 


a  flower,  they  buzz  and  flutter  round  the  old,  old  man 
who  sits  in  an  easy-chair  among  them;  and,  when  he 
falls  ill,  they  fight  among  themselves  and  scratch  each 
other  to  win  the  privilege  of  nursing  him.  This  unusual 
situation — for  it  is  indeed  amazingly  uncustomary  on 
the  stage — is  studied  by  Miss  Crothers  with  a  very 
subtle  sense  of  characterization. 

To  Abe  at  last — who,  despite  the  fact  that  he  is  very 
old,  is  still  a  man — there  comes  a  sense  that  it  is  very 
irksome  to  be  mothered  by  so  many  women.  He  is 
being  killed  with  kindness ;  and — as  men  of  any  age 
will  do  at  times — he  grows  extremely  tired  of  the  other 
sex.  He  desires  to  go  forth  and  have  his  fling,  afar 
from  the  sight  of  any  women ;  and,  to  this  end,  he  plans 
clandestinely  to  run  away  with  an  old  crony  to  spend 
a  glorious  evening  with  the  men — the  real  men — of  the 
Life-Saving  Station  on  the  terrible  and  tingling  coast 
that  is  besieged  eternally  by  the  insidious  sea.  This 
is  his  idea  of  a  single,  great,  and  last  "  good  time," — to 
drink  a  draught  of  fellowship  with  men  of  mighty 
sinews  whose  business  it  is  to  fight  against  the  forces 
of  the  brutal  gods,  and  not  to  lose  the  struggle.  He 
leaves  behind  a  letter  for  his  Angie,  to  tell  her  that  he 
is  going  to  the  Poor  Farm  and  will  never  again  return 
to  be  an  inmate  of  the  Old  Ladies'  Home. 

Angie  reads  that  letter.  It  would  perhaps  have 
broken  her  old  heart,  if  Angie  had  not  known  what 
every  woman  knows, — that  men  are  merely  children  and 
must  come  home  to  their  mothers  before  the  sun  goes 
down.  Abe  comes  home,  of  course.  He  has  had  his 
little  fling;  and  he  is  glad  enough  to  be  received  again 


YOUTH  AND  AGE  IN  THE  DRAMA   81 

as  the  adopted  son — more  dear,  indeed,  because  of  his 
momentary  waywardness — of  the  thirty  mother-hearts 
that  have  never  missed  a  beat  for  him  in  the  Old  Ladies' 
Home.  Angie  is  there,  among  them,  like  a  moon 
among  the  stars.  She  chides  him,  and  scolds  him,  and 
puts  him  to  bed, — as  in  the  years  that  were ;  and  we  do 
not  need  to  be  told  that  "  they  lived  happily  forever 
after." 

Two  young  people — and  only  two — appear  in  the 
fabric  of  this  play: — an  ambitious  young  workman 
who  is  poor,  and  the  rich  daughter  of  one  of  the  direc- 
tors of  the  Old  Ladies'  Home.  They  love  each  other 
ardently,  and  ultimately  marry.  Their  story  is  ade- 
quately plausible,  and,  moreover,  it  is  prettily  told: 
but,  somehow,  it  does  not  seem  to  matter.  For  once, 
the  interest  is  focused  so  tremendously  on  people  who 
are  ending  life  that  the  audience  has  no  attention  to 
devote  to  people  who  are  merely  starting  out  to  test 
it.  These  two  young  lovers — though  truthfully  and 
sympathetically  drawn — might  be  deleted  from  the 
story  without  detracting  from  its  interest. 

Here,  then,  we  have  a  play  that  amuses  and  enchants 
the  audience  because  it  deals,  in  the  ingratiating  mood 
of  sympathetic  understanding,  with  the  subject  of  old 
age.  Yet  this  is  a  subject  which  most  of  our  com- 
mercial managers  have  always  been  afraid  of.  It  has 
been  their  theory  that  youth  must  be  served  in  the 
theatre,  and  that  the  heroine,  in  particular,  must  always 
be  a  young  and  pretty  girl. 

A  little  while  ago,  when  The  Boomerang  was  settling 
down  to  its  record-making  run  at  the  Belasco  Theatre, 


82       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

the  present  writer  happened  to  enjoy  an  interesting 
conversation  with  Mr.  Belasco  concerning  the  career  of 
that  very  slight  but  delicately  modulated  comedy.  In 
discussing  the  basic  reasons  for  the  quite  extraordinary 
popularity  of  this  play,  which  he  admitted  to  be  fragile, 
Mr.  Belasco  s.aid  that  the  public  flocked  to  see  The 
Boomerang  because  it  dealt  with  the  emotions  of  young 
people,  in  terms  that  young  people  could  easily  appre- 
ciate. He  then  advanced  the  interesting  theory  that 
the  average  age  of  the  theatre-going  public  is  only 
twenty-two  or  twenty-three,  and  that,  to  attract  a 
great  deal  of  money  to  the  box-office,  it  is  necessary 
first  of  all  to  please  the  girl  of  twenty-two  and  the 
young  gentleman  whom  she  allures  to  take  her  to  the 
play.  If  the  young  folks  are  satisfied,  said  Mr. 
Belasco,  the  success  of  any  undertaking  in  the  theatre 
is  assured. 

Whether  or  not  this  diagnosis  of  the  case  is  justified 
from  the  standpoint  of  commercial  calculation  [and 
commercial  calculation  is  a  potent  factor  in  dramatic 
art],  it  must  be  stated  that  the  efforts  of  the  dramatist 
would  be  extremely  stultified  if  he  should  feel  himself 
condemned  to  write  forever  for  girls  of  twenty-two. 
There  are  many  interesting  and  important  things  in 
life  that  an  author  cannot  talk  about  to  young  girls, 
for  the  simple  reason  that  young  girls  are  not  suffi- 
ciently experienced  to  understand  them.  The  reach  of 
the  drama  should  be  coextensive  with  the  range  of  life ; 
and  any  aspect  of  the  life  of  man  that  may  be  made  to 
seem  interesting  on  the  stage  should  be  regarded  as 
available  for  projection  in  a  play.  If  a  dramatist  has 


YOUTH  AND  AGE  IN  THE  DRAMA   83 

created  Romeo — whom  any  girl  of  twenty-two  can  un- 
derstand— must  he  be  forbidden,  at  some  subsequent 
period  of  his  own  development,  to  create  King  Lear? 
Must  the  drama  deal  eternally  with  youth,  and  never  at 
all  with  age? 

These  questions  recall  to  vivid  recollection  a  conver- 
sation with  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  which  took  place  in 
London  in  the  spring  of  1910.  Two  of  the  very  great- 
est plays  of  this  great  master  of  the  dramaturgic  art — 
The  Thunderbolt  and  Mid-Channel — had  recently  re- 
ceived a  rather  scant  appreciation  from  the  London 
public.  The  present  writer  suggested  that  one  reason 
for  their  lack  of  popularity  was  the  fact  that  neither 
play  contained  a  character  that  the  average  frequenters 
of  the  theatre  could  easily  and  naturally  love.  "  You 
make  them  hate  the  Blundells,  you  make  them  hate  the 
Mortimores ;  and  they  go  away  confirmed  in  the  uncriti- 
cal opinion  that  you  have  made  them  hate  the  play. 
They  hate  the  play  all  the  harder  because  the  charac- 
ters are  so  real  that  they  cannot  get  away  from  them  or 
get  around  them.  You  make  your  auditors  uncomfort- 
able by  telling  them  the  truth  about  certain  men  and 
women  who  are  very  like  themselves.  They  do  not  like 
to  listen  to  uncomfortable  truths ;  they  decide,  there- 
fore, that  they  do  not  like  to  hear  you  talk;  and  they 
tell  their  friends  to  stay  away."  By  some  such  argu- 
ment, the  critic  sought  to  draw  an  answer  from  the 
dramatist. 

Sir  Arthur's  answer  may  be  recorded  most  clearly 
in  a  paraphrase  that  is  freely  recomposed  from  ma- 
terials that  are  registered  in  memory.  It  ran,  in  the 


84       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

main,  as  follows : — "  It  takes  me  a  year  to  make  a 
play, — six  months  to  get  acquainted  with  the  charac- 
ters, and  six  months  to  build  the  plot  and  write  the 
dialogue.  All  that  time,  I  have  to  seclude  myself  from 
the  companionship  of  friends  and  live  only  with  the 
imaginary  people  of  my  story.  Why  should  I  do  this — 
at  my  age?  I  don't  need  money;  I  don't  desire — if 
you  will  pardon  me  for  saying  so — to  increase  the 
reputation  that  I  have.  Sweet  Lavender  made  my 
fortune ;  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray  made  my 
reputation:  and  for  many  years  I  have  not  needed  to 
write  plays.  Why,  then,  should  I  go  on?  Only  because 
the  task  is  interesting.  But  it  would  not  be  interest- 
ing to  me  unless  I  were  interested  personally  in  the 
people  of  my  plays.  You  say  the  public  hate  the 
Blundells  and  the  Mortimores.  I  do  not  care.  I  love 
those  twisted  and  exacerbated  people,  because — you 
see — they  interest  me.  I  think  I  must  have  what  the 
critics  call  *  a  perverted  mind.'  [It  should  be  noted 
that  the  wise  and  brilliant  playwright  said  this  with  a 
smile.]  The  only  characters  that  seem  to  interest  me 
nowadays  are  people  whose  lives  have  somehow  gone 
awry.  I  like  to  wonder  at  the  difference  between  the 
thing  they  are  and  the  thing  they  might  have  been. 
That,  to  me,  is  the  essence  of  the  mystery  of  life, — the 
difference  between  a  man  as  he  is  and  the  same  man  as 
God  intended  and  desired  him  to  be.  But  to  see  this, 
you  must  catch  your  man  in  the  maturity  of  years. 
Young  people — sweet  young  people  in  particular — no 
longer  seem  to  interest  me:  I  would  rather  spend  my 
evenings  at  the  Garrick  Club  than  go  down  to  the 


YOUTH  AND  AGE  IN  THE  DRAMA   85 

country  and  live  six  months  with  an  imaginary  com- 
pany of  people  like  Sweet  Lavender.  She  was  a  nice 
girl;  but,  after  the  first  hour,  there  was  nothing  more 
to  know  about  her.  I  now  prefer  the  Mortimores ;  for 
there  is  always  something  more  to  find  out  about  people 
such  as  they  are.  You  cannot  exhaust  them  in  an  hour, 
or  six  months.  Young  people  are  pretty  to  look  at,  and 
theatre-goers  like  them,  as  they  liked  my  little  Laven- 
der, so  many  years  ago;  but,  now  that  I  have  lived  a 
little  longer,  I  prefer  people  with  a  past.  A  future — 
that  is  nothing  but  a  dream:  but  a  past — there  you 
have  a  soil  to  delve  in." 

These  words — as  has  been  stated — are  merely  para- 
phrased from  memory;  but  the  sense  is  fairly  repre- 
sentative of  the  attitude  of  mind  of  our  greatest  living 
playwright  toward  his  art.  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  might 
not  disagree  with  Mr.  Belasco  in  the  managerial  opin- 
ion that  the  safest  path  toward  making  money  in  the 
theatre  is  to  write  about  young  people  for  the  young; 
but  he  himself — having  made  sufficient  money  with 
Sweet  Lavender  [the  Boomerang  of  thirty  years  ago] 
— prefers,  for  his  own  pleasure,  to  write  plays  about 
people  who  have  reached  a  maturity  of  years. 

On  the  score  of  art  alone — without  regard  to  com- 
merce— a  great  deal  might  be  said  in  support  of  heroes 
and  of  heroines  that  are  no  longer  young.  A  story  of 
adventure  or  of  love  demands  an  atmosphere  of  youth ; 
but  there  are  many  things  in  life  more  interesting  to  the 
adult  mind  than  adolescent  love  or  extravagant  adven- 
ture. The  greatest  plays  are  plays  of  character;  and 
character  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  sum-total 


86       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

of  experience.  What  a  person  is,  at  any  moment,  is 
merely  a  remembered  record  of  all  that  he  has  been.  To 
be  alive,  a  person  must  have  lived ;  and  very  few  people 
have  lived  at  all  at  twenty-two. 

The  greatest  artists  who  have  dealt  with  character 
have  always  preferred  to  depict  people  in  the  maturity 
of  years  instead  of  in  the  heyday  of  that  superficial 
beauty  which  is  nothing  but  a  passing  bloom  upon  the 
face  of  youth.  Consider  Rembrandt,  for  example — the 
most  searching  and  most  deeply  penetrant  of  all  the 
portrait-painters  of  the  world.  A  Rembrandt  portrait 
is  a  record  of  all  that  life  has  written  on  the  face  of  the 
sitter ;  and  the  portrait  becomes  meaningful  almost  pre- 
cisely in  proportion  to  the  age  of  the  person  whom  the 
artist  looked  at.  Like  Velasquez,  Rembrandt  painted 
what  he  saw:  but  with  this  difference, — he  had  to  have 
something  to  see.  The  disinterested  Spaniard  could 
depict  the  vacant  faces  of  the  royal  family  with  abso- 
lute fidelity  to  fact  and  yet  achieve  a  triumph  of  the 
minor  artistry  of  painting;  but  Rembrandt,  to  be 
interested,  had  to  have  a  sitter  who  had  lived.  If  the 
all  but  perfect  artist  of  the  Netherlands  can  be  re- 
garded ever  to  have  failed  at  all,  he  failed  in  the  depic- 
tion of  young  girls.  There  was  nothing  in  their  faces 
for  such  a  man  to  see.  He  was  most  successful  in  his 
portraits  of  old  women  and  old  men;  for  in  these  he 
was  allowed  to  wonder — to  quote  once  more  the  mean- 
ing of  Pinero — at  the  difference  between  the  thing  they 
were  and  the  thing  they  might  have  been.  He  depicted 
character  as  the  sum-total  of  a  life-time  of  experience. 

Must  the  playwright  be  denied  this  privilege  because 


YOUTH  AND  AGE  IN  THE  DRAMA   87 

the  average  theatre-goer  is  a  girl  of  twenty-two?  The 
success  of  Old  Lady  31  is  a  salutary  fact  to  bolster  up 
our  wishes  on  the  negative  side  of  this  contention.  Abe 
and  Angie,  in  this  play,  are  more  interesting  at  seventy 
or  eighty  than  they  ever  could  have  been  at  twenty, 
before  time  and  the  mellowness  of  ripe  experience  had 
written  genial  wrinkles  on  their  brows.  Rembrandt 
would  have  loved  to  paint  a  portrait  of  these  two ;  and 
Rembrandt,  in  the  heaven  of  eternal  artists,  sits  very 
high  in  the  Celestial  Rose. 

Another  point  to  be  considered  is  that  young  people, 
when  imagined  by  the  dramatist,  must  be  depicted  by 
young  people  on  the  stage.  Hence  a  premium  is  set 
on  youth  and  beauty  among  our  actors  and,  more  espe- 
cially, our  actresses.  A  young  girl  endowed  by  nature 
with  a  pretty  face  and  fluffy  hair  is  made  a  star,  while 
many  older  and  less  lovely  women  who  know  more — 
much  more — about  the  art  of  acting  are  relegated  to 
the  ranks.  The  greatest  interpretative  artist  in  the 
world,  Madame  Yvette  Guilbert,  said  recently  in  a  pub- 
lic address  that  no  woman  could  act  well  before  she  had 
attained  the  age  of  thirty-five.  Twenty  years  of  study 
of  such  technical  details  as  those  of  diction  and  of  ges- 
ture, and  a  maturity  of  personal  experience,  were 
absolutely  necessary  before  an  actress  could  be  fitted  to 
stand  forth  before  the  public  as  an  interpreter  of  human 
nature.  If  this  is  true — and  the  solid  fact  must  be 
accepted  that  Madame  Guilbert  herself  is  now  a  finer 
and  a  greater  artist  than  she  seemed  even  capable  of 
becoming  twenty  years  ago — the  premium  that  now  is 
set  upon  the  youthful  charm  of  youthful  actresses  is 


88       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

seen  to  be  a  very  shallow  thing.     What  boots  it,  after 
-all,  to  be  a  star  at  twenty-five,  unless  a  woman  can 
become,  like  Sarah  Bernhardt,  a  central  and  essential 
sun  at  seventy? 

Much,  of  course,  might  be  said,  conceivably,  on  either 
side.  On  the  one  hand,  there  is  Keats,  who  died  at 
twenty-five ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  Ibsen,  who 
did  not  begin  his  greatest  work  till  after  he  was  fifty. 
Those  whom  the  gods  love  die  young  or  live  long,  as 
the  chance  may  fall ;  and  there  is  no  mathematical  solu- 
tion of  the  mystery.  But  this  much  may  be  said  with 
emphasis,  in  summing  up : — that  there  is  no  valid  reason 
why  the  dramatist  should  be  denied  the  privilege  of 
dealing  with  character  at  its  maturity  in  terms  that 
are  intelligible  to  the  adult  mind.  Youth  may  be  served 
in  the  theatre ;  but  old  age  is  still  of  service,  as  a  theme 
for  the  serener  contemplation  of  a  ripe  intelligence. 
Despite  the  imperious  and  undeniable  appeal  of  youth, 
there  must  always  be  a  place  upon  the  boards  for  the 
dramatist  who  says, — 

Grow  old  along  with  me! 

The  best  is  yet  to  be, 
The  last  of  life,  for  which  the  first  was  made: 

Our  times  are  in  His  hand 

Who  saith,  "  A  whole  I  planned, 
Youth  shows  but  half;  trust  God;  see  all  nor  be  afraid!  " 


XII 
YVETTE    GUILBERT  —  PREMIERE    DISEUSE 

THE  stage  is  very  empty ;  it  is  almost  pitifully  lonely. 
The  back-drop  [borrowed  from  some  scenic  store- 
house] displays  a  conventional  picture  of  a  conven- 
tional French  garden.  There  is  no  carpeting  upon  the 
bare  boards  of  the  platform.  Forward,  in  one  corner,  a 
grand  piano  looks  incongruously  out  of  place;  and  at 
the  instrument  is  seated  a  totally  uninteresting  man. 
The  lights  have  been  turned  up,  and  a  momentary  hush 
has  quenched  the  buzzing  in  the  auditorium. 

A  woman  enters  through  the  wings,  walks  downward 
to  the  center  of  the  stage;  and  at  once  the  house  is 
filled  and  thrilled  with  the  sensation  that  this  is  one  of 
the  great  women  of  the  world.  She  is  wearing  a  medie- 
val costume — a  robe  to  set  you  dreaming  of  the  little 
church  at  Castelfranco  and  the  magic  carpet  hung  be- 
hind the  head  of  the  Virgin  of  Giorgione:  but  it  is  not 
the  costume,  but  the  woman  wearing  it,  that  has  en- 
chanted your  attention.  "  She  walks  in  beauty,  like 
the  night  of  cloudless  climes  and  starry  skies." 

She  has  reached  the  center  of  the  stage;  she  pauses 
and  stands  still;  she  is  about  to  speak.  A  thousand 
ears  instinctively  yearn  toward  her.  In  a  few  sen- 
tences of  finely  chiseled  French,  she  announces  that  she 
is  going  to  render  an  old  ballad  of  the  people — a  ballad 

89 


90       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

of  the  fifteenth  century — that  tells  the  story  of  the  birth 
of  Christ.  That  is  all ;  but,  somehow,  you  have  experi- 
enced already  a  drift  of  very  great  adventures.  First, 
you  have  seen  a  woman  walking  greatly;  and  no  other 
woman  can  do  that,  since  Modjeska  passed  away. 
Next,  you  have  seen  a  woman  greatly  standing  still; 
and  no  other  woman  can  do  that,  except  la  Duse,  whom 
a  nation  calls  divine.  Then,  you  have  heard  a  woman 
speak;  and  you  have  been  reminded  of  the  goal  of  all 
your  striving,  ever  since  you  were  a  little  child  and  felt 
yourself  first  tortured  by  the  imperious  and  yet  elusive 
eloquence  of  words. 

From  the  inconspicuous  piano  a  few  notes  have  been 
emitted;  and  the  great  woman  has  begun  to  enunciate 
the  words  of  the  old  ballad.  The  stage  is  not  empty 
any  longer ;  it  will  never  be  lonely  any  more.  The  silly 
old  back-drop  has  faded  quite  away.  The  piano  has 
become  invisible.  You  are  looking  forth,  in  a  wonder- 
ful clear  night  of  stars,  over  the  hushed  housetops  of 
the  town  of  Bethlehem.  From  somewhere  in  the  dis- 
tance comes  the  high-pitched,  thin,  and  drowsy  call  of 
the  night-watchman  droning  forth  the  hour.  You  are 
back  in  the  mysterious  and  dreaming  East,  where  mil- 
lions meditate  upon  the  immanence  of  God — back  in 
that  year  of  years  from  which  our  time  is  dated.  You 
see  a  heavy,  weary  woman  toiling  toward  a  tavern ;  you 
see  her  rebuffed  rudely  by  a  fat-pursed  hostess ;  you 
share  the  timorous  despair  of  her  humble  husband ;  you 
are  relegated  to  the  stable,  and  breathe  the  breath  of 
cattle.  There  is  a  pause — a  silence.  Then,  suddenly, 
there  comes  a  chant  as  of  a  host  of  angels,  trumpet- 


YVETTE  GUILBERT  91 

tongued,  blaring  forth  the  miracle  of  birth  beneath  the 
dancing  of  a  million  stars. 

No  play  has  ever  made  you  conscious,  with  such 
keenness,  of  so  much  of  human  life ;  no  music  has  ever 
given  such  wings  to  your  imagination.  You  begin  to 
wonder  what  has  happened  to  you ;  you  begin  to  realize 
that,  in  the  drama  of  your  own  experience,  the  thrilling 
stage-direction  has  at  last  been  written, — "  Enter  Art  "  ! 
But,  once  again,  the  great  woman  pauses,  and  is  silent, 
and  stands  still,  and  speaks.  Next,  she  tells  you,  she 
will  render  an  old-time  ballad  of  the  death  of  Christ. 
This  ballad,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  was  chanted 
every  Eastertide  before  the  portals  of  all  the  great 
cathedrals  of  France.  There  is  a  silence,  and  a  pause. 
"  Including  the  Cathedral  of  Rheims,"  the  artist  adds : 
and  you  feel  great  tears  welling  up  into  your  eyes. 

Thence,  forward  through  the  centuries,  she  leads  you 
through  the  history  of  France,  projecting  many  ballads 
of  the  people,  nearly  all  by  nameless  authors — some 
tragic,  some  poignantly  pathetic,  others  charmingly 
alluring,  others  brightly  gay.  She  changes  her  cos- 
tume to  suit  the  changes  of  the  centuries ;  she  alters  her 
carriage,  her  gestures,  the  conduct  of  her  voice,  to  suit 
the  alterations  of  the  moods  that  she  imagines.  But, 
every  time,  she  seems  to  crowd  the  stage  with  many 
living  people ;  and  always  she  overwhelms  the  audience 
with  the  spirit  of  the  piece  that  she  is  rendering. 

You  come  away  from  her  performance,  swimming 
in  a  phosphorescent  sea.  For  two  hours  you  have  wor- 
shiped in  a  temple  where  beauty  is  truth,  truth  beauty ; 
and  now  you  know  that  nothing  else  on  earth  is  worth 


92       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

the  knowing.  You  have  been  seeking,  all  your  life,  for 
Art ;  and  at  last  you  have  met  it  face  to  face ;  and  you 
are  not  afraid,  but  there  is  a  terrible,  sweet  singing  in 
your  soul. 

You  have  been  reminded,  in  a  single  afternoon,  of  the 
great  person  that  you  meant  to  be  when  you  were 
twenty-one;  you  have  been  enlisted,  once  again,  in  the 
little  army  of  the  good  and  faithful  who  labor  ever- 
more without  discouragement  to  make  the  world  more 
beautiful;  you  have  been  allured  once  more  to  such  a 
love  of  the  loveliness  of  language  that  you  no  longer 
hear  the  strident  voices  of  the  people  in  the  street ;  you 
have  been  taught  to  imagine  the  possibilities  of  civiliza- 
tion ;  you  have  sold  your  soul  to  Art,  and  deemed  the 
bargain  generous. 

There  is  no  word  in  English  for  that  medium  of  art 
of  which  Yvette  Guilbert  is  the  supreme  and  perfect 
master.  It  is  not  acting,  it  is  not  singing,  it  is  not 
recitation ;  yet  it  combines  the  finest  beauties  of  all 
three.  It  offers  simultaneously  an  interpretation  of 
literature  and  an  interpretation  of  music;  and  it  con- 
tinually reminds  you  of  what  is  loveliest  in  painting,  in 
sculpture,  and  in  dancing.  The  French  call  her  a 
diseuse — that  is  to  say,  a  woman  who  knows  how  to 
say  things;  and  when  we  think  how  few  people  in  the 
world  this  phrase  could  justly  be  applied  to,  we  shall 
no  longer  wonder  at  the  rarity  of  her  performance. 

The  art  of  saying  things,  as  exemplified  by  Madame 
Guilbert,  has  become,  indeed,  a  synthesis  of  all  the  arts. 
Details  have  been  selected  from  the  methods  of  all  the 
known  media  of  expression  and  have  been  arranged  in 


YVETTE  GUILBERT  93 

a  perfectly  concordant  pattern.  All  the  arts  are 
merely  so  many  different  languages  to  give  expression 
to  the  same  essential  entity ;  and  this  essential  entity — 
which  constitutes  the  soul  of  art — is  rhythm.  Paint- 
ing, sculpture,  and  architecture  make  rhythmic  pat- 
terns to  the  eye ;  music,  poetry,  and  prose  made  rhyth- 
mic patterns  to  the  ear.  The  art  of  Yvette  Guilbert 
does  both.  By  her  bodily  movements,  her  gestures,  her 
facial  expression,  she  makes  patterns  in  space,  to  charm 
the  eye ;  and  by  her  enunciation  of  words  and  music,  she 
makes  patterns  in  time,  to  charm  the  ear.  She  has 
developed  a  universal  language — a  way  of  appealing 
simultaneously  and  with  equal  power  to  the  deaf  and 
to  the  blind. 

The  secret  of  her  art  is  a  mastery  of  rhythm — the 
quintessential  element  of  all  the  arts  that  have  ever 
been  developed  by  mankind;  and  of  this  element  her 
mastery  is  absolute.  She  is  one  of  the  great  artists  of 
the  world — not  only  of  our  time  but  of  all  times.  She 
belongs  to  that  high  company  that  is  graced  by  Dona- 
tello,  Gian  Bellini  at  his  best,  Mozart,  and  Keats — the 
perfect  masters  of  a  finally  perfected  medium. 

Her  art,  alas !,  is  not  like  theirs  immortal,  for  the 
medium  of  her  expression  is  the  perishable  temple  of 
the  human  soul ;  but  to  us,  who  are  privileged  to  see  and 
hear  her,  the  beauty  that  she  bids  to  be  appeals  more 
poignantly  because  of  the  tragic  sense  that  it  is  tran- 
sient. It  seems,  indeed,  an  image  of  that  "  Joy,  whose 
hand  is  ever  at  his  lips,  bidding  adieu." 

But  Yvette  Guilbert  is  not  only  a  great  artist,  she 
is  also  a  great  woman ;  and  this  fact  adds  the  final 


needed  note  to  a  performance  that  is  necessarily  so 
personal  as  hers.  There  are  not  so  many  really  great 
people  in  the  world  that  it  can  ever  cease  to  be  a  privi- 
lege to  come  into  their  presence.  She  is  a  great  woman, 
because — in  Whitman's  phrase — she  "  contains  multi- 
tudes." She  sits  serene  upon  that  height  of  civilization 
toward  which  uncounted  generations  have  been  toiling 
since  the  dawn  of  time;  and,  throned  upon  the  summit, 
she  "  throws  little  glances  down,  smiling,  and  under- 
stands them  with  her  eyes." 

She  is  not  only  supreme  in  art ;  she  is  also  supreme  in 
personality.  She  seems  to  incorporate  within  herself 
the  very  essence  of  the  nation  that  has  engendered  her. 
"  Though  fallen  on  evil  days — on  evil  days  though 
fallen,  and  evil  tongues,"  a  clear  majority  of  living 
men  still  realize  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  truth,  and 
such  a  thing  as  beauty,  and  such  a  thing  as  right,  and 
are  ready  to  die  for  the  idea  that  civilization  is  a  better 
thing  than  barbarism.  To  all  who  are  so  minded,  the 
most  inspiring  ideal  that  is  tingling  in  the  world  to- 
day is  the  ideal  of  that  beleaguered  country  that  is 
holding  firm  the  ramparts  of  the  only  world  worth  liv- 
ing in :  that  country  of  the  neat  and  nimble  speech,  that 
country  of  sweet  reason  and  unfathomable  tenderness 
of  heart,  that  country  of  liberty,  equality,  fraternity, 
that  country  which  is  the  second  home  and  foster- 
mother  of  all  the  artists  of  the  world  who  meditate  be- 
neath the  stars.  All  that  this  leader  of  the  nations  has 
to  say  seems  summed  up  and  expressed  in  the  incompar- 
able art  of  this  incomparable  woman.  It  is  as  if  great 
France  had  blown  a  kiss  to  us  across  the  seas. 


XIII 
THE  LOVELINESS  OF  LITTLE  THINGS 

FOR  those  who  seek  adventure  among  beautiful 
achievements,  there  is  a  special  pleasure  in  contemplat- 
ing the  loveliness  of  little  things.  The  tiny  temple  at 
Nimes  is  not  so  great  an  edifice  as  the  Cathedral  of 
Amiens,  but  it  is  much  more  perfect  and  more  fine. 
The  mind  is  overawed  by  the  tremendous  seraphim  of 
Tintoretto,  cutting  through  chaos  with  strong,  level 
flight;  but  the  heart  goes  out  with  keener  fondness  to 
the  little  angels  of  Fra  Angelico,  that  demurely  set  one 
tiny  foot  before  the  other  on  the  pansied  fields  of  Para- 
dise. The  vastest  work  of  Byron  is  Don  Juan,  with  its 
enormous  incongruity  of  moods ;  but  his  loveliest  work 
is  the  simple-mooded  little  lyric  that  begins,  "  She  walks 
in  beauty."  Could  any  colossus  of  sculpture  be  so 
dainty  or  so  delicate  as  the  little  bronze  Narcissus  of 
Naples,  whose  uplifted  finger  is  eternally  accompanied 
by  a  melody  of  unheard  flutes?  What  is  Shakespeare's 
finest  and  most  perfect  work?  It  is  not  Hamlet  nor 
Macbeth;  it  is  not  even  Othello;  it  is,  I  think,  the  tiny 
song  beginning,  "  Take,  oh,  take  those  lips  away."  It 
is  conceivable  that  any  of  his  great  plays  might  be 
improved  by  a  hundred  alterations  in  the  lines ;  but  to 

95 


96       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

change  a  single  syllable  of  that  forlorn  and  lovely  lyric 
would  be  like  scratching  the  face  of  a  little  child. 

It  is  one  of  the  paradoxes  of  art  that  its  very  finest 
works  are  nearly  always  minor  works.  The  pursuit  of 
perfectness  is  incompatible  with  the  ambition  for  am- 
plitude, and  a  vast  creation  can  seldom  be  completely 
fine.  A  cameo  is  a  more  perfect  thing  than  a  cathedral ; 
and  lovers  of  all  that  is  most  delicate  in  versification 
must  turn  to  minor  poets,  like  Catullus.  The  major 
poet  can  afford  to  be  careless,  but  the  minor  poet  is 
constrained  to  write  perfectly  if  he  is  to  write  at  all. 
With  the  major  poet,  mere  art  is  a  secondary  concern; 
he  may,  indeed,  be  a  great  artist  like  Milton,  or  he  may 
be  a  reckless  and  shoddy  artist  like  Walt  Whitman. 
But  the  minor  poet  loves  art  for  the  sake  of  art;  he 
pursues  perfection,  and  can  rest  content  with  nothing 
less  faultless  and  less  fine.  Amid  the  drums  and  tram- 
plings  of  all  the  great  Elizabethan  tragedies,  there  is  no 
passage  quite  so  perfect  in  pathetic  delicacy  as  Mr. 
Austin  Dobson's  little  lyric  in  dialogue  entitled,  "  Good 
night,  Babette." 

Such  exquisite  minor  works  as  this  and  all  the  others 
we  have  mentioned  must  be  regarded  as  the  little  chil- 
dren of  art.  They  awaken  an  affection  that  can  never 
be  inspired  by  those  gigantic  presences  before  which 
we  bow  our  heads  in  awe.  It  is  a  great  thing  to  strew 
roses  in  the  triumphal  path  of  Caesar,  but  it  is  a  sweeter 
thing  to  deck  with  daffodils  the  blown  hair  of  some 
dancing  little  maid.  In  the  autobiography  of  Ben- 
venuto  Cellini,  we  learn  that  the  dearest  heir  of  his  in- 
vention was  not  the  tall  and  agile  Perseus  that  now 


LOVELINESS  OF  LITTLE  THINGS        9? 

takes  the  rain  in  Florence,  but  the  precious  little  salt- 
cellar which  now  arrests  the  wanderer  through  many 
rooms  in  the  vast  museum  of  Vienna.  In  this  minor 
work,  the  artist's  medium  was  not  bronze,  but  gold;  he 
was  not  making  a  monument  for  multitudes  to  gape  at, 
but  was  perfecting  a  tiny  and  a  precious  thing  for  the 
eyes  of  the  enlightened  few.  In  this  regard,  a  minor 
work  of  art  may  be  defined  as  a  Work  of  art  designed 
for  the  minority. 

In  many  modern  languages,  like  French  and  German 
and  Italian,  the  sweetest  way  of  expressing  endearment 
is  through  the  use  of  a  diminutive.  "  Miitterchen,"  in 
German,  means  not  merely  "  little  mother  "  but  "  dear 
little  mother  "  as  well ;  and  when  the  younger  Lippi  was 
nicknamed  Filipino,  the  name  meant  not  so  much  "  little 
Philip"  as  "the  well-beloved  Philip."  There  is  a 
famous  passage  in  Dante's  Purgatory,  at  the  outset  of 
the  twenty-eighth  canto,  where  the  poet's  keenness  of 
affection  for  the  perfect  world  is  expressed  by  his  ap- 
preciation of  the  little  birds  that  sing  on  little  branches 
in  tree-tops  swung  lightly  by  a  little  breeze;  and  this 
succession  of  diminutives  is  like  a  reaching  out  of  tiny 
fingers  groping  for  the  reader's  hand. 

Whoever  has  looked  upon  the  sweetest  painting  in 
the  world  must  know  the  love  of  little  things.  When 
you  enter  the  tiny  chapel  .of  the  Frari  Church  in  Venice 
where  the  masterwork  of  Gian  Bellini  sits  enshrined, 
you  begin  instinctively  to  walk  in  whispers.  Your  first 
impression  is  that  of  an  ineffable  serenity — a  quiet  that 
you  must  not  interrupt.  But  this  serenity  arises  partly 
from  the  fact  that  the  Madonna  is  such  a  little  lady, 


98       PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

and  that  the  winged  musicians  that  stand  listening  be- 
neath her  throne  are  the  youngest  of  the  children  of 
the  angels.  And  her  own  child,  despite  his  sturdiness  of 
standing,  seems  such  a  little  boy  beside  those  dwarfed 
athletes  that  bulge  their  muscles  in  Raphael's  cartoons. 
And  the  strips  of  landscape  beyond  the  venerable  saints 
open  such  enticing,  tiny  vistas  of  the  earth.  .  .  . 
Tintoretto  may  swoop  roaring  through  immensity ;  but 
here  is  an  artist  whose  heart  was  as  a  nest  for  all  the 
sweet,  winged  wishes  of  the  world.  He  reminds  you  of 
little  children  kneeling  in  the  night  and  whispering 
"  God  bless  .  .  . "  to  all  the  things  that  are. 

Similarly,  the  devotees  of  the  drama  must  always 
keep  an  open  home  within  their  hearts  for  the  reception 
of  the  little  children  of  this  most  adult  of  all  the  arts. 
There  are  certain  plays  that  one  would  like  to  mention 
always  with  an  Italian  diminutive — with  some  such 
nickname  as  "  Prunella,"  for  example.  There  is  no 
vastness  and  no  grandeur  in  their  structure — only  an 
intimacy  of  little  perfectnesses.  One  feels  a  bit  afraid 
lest  they  might  be  seen  by  some  one  incapable  of  tender- 
ness for  tiny  things.  To  this  category  must  be  assigned 
that  exquisite  dramatic  poem  of  Alfred  de  Musset, 
A  Quoi  Revent  les  Jeunes  Filles;  and  in  this  same 
context  the  reader  must  also  be  invited  to  consider  such 
a  fantasy  as  Prunella,  by  Mr.  Laurence  Housman  and 
Mr.  Granville  Barker. 

Prunella  is  a  young  maiden  who  lives  immured  in  a 
little  house  and  garden  with  three  forbidding  aunts, 
Prim,  Privacy,  and  Prude.  Along  comes  a  company 
of  strolling  players,  headed  by  Pierrot  and  Scaramel, 


LOVELINESS  OF  LITTLE  THINGS        99 

who  gain  access  to  Prunella  and  awaken  in  her  a  long- 
ing to  flee  away  into  the  mysterious  and  alluring  world. 
Pierrot  wins  her  love,  and,  aided  by  Scaramel  and  the 
others,  abducts  her  from  her  prison-house  at  night. 
In  the  last  act,  after  Pierrot  has  tired  of  her,  she  wan- 
ders home  friendless  and  disenchanted.  But  Pierrot 
had  learned  [it  is  sweet  to  think  he  may  have  learned 
this  little  truth  from  Mr.  Austin  Dobson]  that  "  love 
comes  back  to  his  vacant  dwelling."  His  loneliness  has 
taught  him  the  value  and  the  need  of  the  old,  old  love 
that  he  knew  of  yore.  Prunella  once  again  becomes  his 
Pierrette,  and  they  look  forward  toward  a  life  whose 
love  is  real. 

This  story  is,  in  all  essentials,  the  same  story  that 
was  told  in  Sister  Beatrice;  but  it  lacks  those  overtones 
of  eternity  which  Maeterlinck  has  imparted  to  his 
narrative.  It  was  apparently  the  purpose  of  the 
authors  of  Prunella  to  emulate  the  pretty  and  witty 
art  of  such  a  piece  as  Les  Romanesques  of  M.  Edmond 
Rostand,  but  they  lacked  that  brilliant  exuberance  of 
fancy  which  was  demanded  by  their  task.  Every  once 
in  a  while  the  authors  permit  us  to  regret  that  the  piece 
could  not  have  been  written  for  them  by  Theodore  de 
Banville  or  Mr.  Austin  Dobson.  Several  of  Mr.  Hous- 
man's  lyric  stanzas  are  delightful ;  but  his  handling  of 
rhymed  couplets  is  pedestrian,  and  the  prose  passages 
lack  that  illumination,  as  by  a  flock  of  fire-flies,  that  is 
desirable  in  a  composition  of  this  type. 


XIV 
THE  MAGIC  OF  MR.  CHESTERTON 

IT  is  not  often  that  those  of  us  who  frequent  the 
theatres  in  New  York  are  permitted  to  quote  with  per- 
tinence that  noble  phrase  of  Wordsworth's, — "  Great 
men  have  been  among  us."  Most  of  the  plays  that  we 
are  asked  to  see — however  clever  be  their  deft  adjust- 
ment of  a  calculated  means  to  a  previously  estimated 
end — have  been  written,  all  too  undeniably,  by  men  no 
greater  than  ourselves.  While  admitting,  with  due  def- 
erence, our  inability  to  manufacture  so  satisfactory  an 
entertainment,  we  still  remain  uncomfortably  conscious 
of  our  own  ability  to  manufacture  something  else  that 
shall  be  equally  praiseworthy  in  its  kind.  Mr.  George 
Broadhurst  may  know  more  about  the  business  of  mak- 
ing plays  than  we  do ;  but  there  are  many  other  matters 
concerning  which  we  feel  that  we  know  more  than  Mr. 
Broadhurst.  In  this  mood — which  is,  as  has  been  said, 
uncomfortable — we  miss  that  genuflection  of  the  spirit, 
that  graceful  upward  looking  of  the  eyes  of  the  intelli- 
gence, which  we  instinctively  desire  to  pay  out  as  a 
tribute  to  a  mind  that  is  unquestionably  bigger  than 
our  own. 

It  has  often  been  remarked  that  women  like  to  be 

100 


THE  MAGIC  OF  MR.  CHESTERTON     101 

mastered, — that  they  like  to  be  bent  and  beaten  by  a 
physical  and  mental  power  that  is  strong  enough  to 
conquer  them.  Even  so,  appreciators  and  adorers  of 
the  arts  like  to  bow  before  the  power  of  a  mind  that 
they  perceive  to  be  more  mighty  than  their  own.  Those 
of  us  who  reverently  enter  any  temple  of  the  arts  are 
evermore  desirous  of  recognizing  and  trumpeting  the 
miracle  that  "  great  men  have  been  among  us."  Our 
knees  are  always  more  than  ready  for  a  genuflection; 
but  too  often — all  too  often — we  strain  our  ears  in 
vain  to  catch  the  swishing  of  those  garments  whose 
edges  we  may  seize  with  dignity  and  kiss  with  adora- 
tion. We  come  into  the  holy  place  with  prayers  upon 
our  lips,  but  we  find  it  tragically  empty  of  a  god  to 
listen  to  our  chants  of  praise. 

Aspiring  young  authors  often  ask  advice  as  to  how 
to  go  about  the  business  of  learning  to  write  interesting 
plays.  Ought  they,  like  Shakespeare,  to  begin  their 
apprenticeship  as  actors?  Ought  they,  like  Ibsen,  to 
begin  as  stage-directors?  Should  they  study  with  Pro- 
fessor George  Pierce  Baker  of  Harvard  University,  or 
with  Mr.  George  M.  Cohan  of  Broadway?  They  are 
usually  told  to  crawl  into  the  theatre  as  quickly  as 
possible,  in  any  capacity  whatever,  and  to  spend  at 
least  a  decade  in  the  theatre,  picking  up  a  practical 
knowledge  of  all  the  tricks  of  the  dramatic  trade.  If 
only  for  the  sake  of  variety,  the  present  writer  would 
like  to  offer  another  kind  of  counsel.  It  might  not  be 
a  bad  plan  if  the  aspiring  young  author  should  devote 
the  first  thirty-five  or  forty  years  of  his  life  to  the  task 
of  growing  up  to  be  a  great  man,  and  should  subse- 


102     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

quently  sit  down  in  some  comparatively  idle  moment 
and  write  a  play  to  please  himself.  Whatever  pleases 
a  great  man  is  likely  to  please  at  least  the  sort  of 
people  who  recognize  a  great  man  when  he  speaks  to 
them;  and  could  any  playwright  desire  a  more  honor- 
able audience? 

Magic  is  the  first  and  only  play  by  Mr.  Gilbert  K. 
Chesterton.  Mr.  Chesterton  has  had  no  training  what- 
soever in  the  technique  of  the  theatre.  Indeed,  since  he 
settled  down  in  his  big  chair  in  Beaconsfield,  he  has 
rarely,  if  ever,  gone  to  the  theatre  so  many  as  half  a 
dozen  times  in  any  season.  Yet  Magic  goes  to  show 
how  good  a  job  may  be  accomplished  by  a  very  able 
mind  that  chooses,  for  a  change,  to  undertake  a  task  in 
an  unfamiliar  medium.  Mr.  Max  Marcin  or  Mr.  Roi 
Cooper  Megrue  might  have  built  this  play  a  little  bet- 
ter ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  it  may  be  doubted  if  either 
of  them  would  ever  have  thought  of  building  it  at  all. 
And,  when  it  came  to  the  writing  of  the  dialogue, — well, 
G.  K.  C.  knows  how  to  write,  and  that  also  is  a  little 
matter  that  requires  an  apprenticeship  of  twenty 
years.  .  .  . 

Magic  is  beautifully  written,  in  that  peculiar  mood 
of  intermingled  poetry  and  humor  that  seems  to  be 
exclusively  the  property  of  the  English-speaking  race. 
The  French,  like  Edmond  Rostand,  can  be  at  the  same 
time  witty  and  poetic;  the  Germans,  like  Goethe,  can 
be  at  the  same  time  poetic  and  satirical ;  the  Italians, 
like  Dante,  can  be  at  the  same  time  sardonic  and  poetic ; 
but  only  the  English,  from  Chaucer  to  Chesterton,  can 
command  that  paradoxical  and  almost  mystic  mood 


THE  MAGIC  OF  MR.  CHESTERTON     103 

which  is  both  laughable  and  lovable, — both  lovely  and 
laughing. 

Magic  is  a  very  interesting  play,  for  the  simple  rea- 
son that  Mr.  Chesterton  is  a  very  interesting  man.  The 
important  thing  about  Mr.  Chesterton  is  not  what  he 
thinks  about  anything  in  particular,  but  what  he  thinks 
about  everything  in  general.  It  is  the  mark  of  a  great 
man  that  his  vision  of  the  universe  is  so  coordinated 
that  what  appeals  to  him  in  this  or  that  detail  is  mainly 
the  fact  of  their  relation  to  each  other.  When  a  man, 
for  instance,  has  encompassed  the  religion  of  Keats,  the 
thing  that  interests  him  thereafter  about  beauty  is  the 
simple  fact  that  it  is  true,  and  the  thing  that  interests 
him  about  truth  is  the  simple  fact  that  it  is  beautiful. 
Pragmatical  philosophers  assert  that  any  religion  will 
serve,  so  long  as  it  may  prove  to  be  of  service;  but, 
without  a  religion,  a  mind  is  at  the  mercy  of  every  wind 
that  blows,  like  a  ship  without  an  anchorage.  The  mark 
of  a  great  man  is  that  he  has  succeeded  in  discovering  a 
religion  that,  at  least,  is  suited  to  himself  and  serves 
adequately  to  coordinate  the  apprehensions  of  his  in- 
tellect. (At  this  point,  it  may  not  be  superfluous  to 
remind  the  reader  parenthetically  that,  if  any  of  our 
American  playwrights — with  the  possible  exception  of 
Mr.  Augustus  Thomas — have  discovered  a  religion, 
they  have  succeeded  in  concealing  the  discovery  from 
those  of  us  who  listen  to  their  plays.) 

Unless  a  man  can  tell  us  clearly  what  he  thinks  about 
the  universe  in  general,  his  scattered  thoughts  concern- 
ing this  or  that  detail  must  be  regarded  as  of  very  small 
importance.  Not  until  we  know  a  man's  opinion  about 


God  are  we  ready  to  appreciate  his  opinions  about  ships 
and  shoes  and  sealing-wax  and  cabbages  and  kings. 
In  the  great  gigantic  jig-saw  picture-puzzle  of  the  uni- 
verse, the  pattern  is  the  only  thing  that  really  counts. 
The  important  thing  about  Mr.  Chesterton  is  that  his 
mental  attitude  toward  anything  is  consistent  with 
his  mental  attitude  toward  everything. 

Mr.  Chesterton's  religion  is  exceedingly  simple.  De- 
spite a  general  impression  to  the  contrary,  he  is  not  a 
member  of  any  established  church, — neither  of  the 
Church  of  England  nor  of  the  Church  of  Rome;  but, 
to  his  friends,  he  is  accustomed  to  describe  himself  as 
an  Early  Christian.  He  believes  in  miracles.  He 
believes,  in  other  words,  that  the  business  of  the  uni- 
verse is  conducted  on  two  planes — the  natural  and 
the  supernatural.  He  believes  that  this  world,  for 
instance,  is  inhabited  not  only  by  those  temporary  ten- 
ants that  are  known  as  human  beings  ("  more  or  less 
human,"  certain  satirists  would  say),  but  also  by  such 
eternal  tenants  as  ghosts  and  goblins,  saints  and  fairies, 
devils,  angels,  and  many  other  sorts  of  disembodied 
spirits. 

In  this  belief  (which,  of  course,  is  only  a  detail  of  a 
larger  pattern  of  coordinated  mysticism),  Mr.  Chester- 
ton is  utterly  sincere.  His  mind  would  not  be  willing 
to  accept  a  world  that  had  no  magic  in  it.  That  is  the 
kind  of  person  that  he  is ;  and,  if  we  disagree  with  his 
religion,  we  have  at  least  the  privilege  of  recognizing 
that  he  is,  at  least,  a  person  of  that  kind,  and  that  he 
means  what  he  says,  and  means  it  absolutely. 

With  Mr.  Chesterton's  belief  in  miracles,  the  present 


THE  MAGIC  OF  MR.  CHESTERTON     105 

commentator  disagrees  entirely.  One  of  the  most  mag- 
nificent attributes  of  that  abstraction  which  we  call  con- 
veniently the  Mind  of  God  is  the  idea  of  Law.  To 
assume  what  Stevenson  has  termed  "  some  wilful  ille- 
gality of  Nature,"  would  seem  less  wonderful  than  to 
assume  an  irrefragible  continuance  of  the  august  de- 
cree. It  is  so  great  a  thing  to  make  and  keep  a  law 
that  it  would  be  comparatively  trivial  to  break  it.  The 
simple  facts  of  birth  and  death  are  so  amazing  that  our 
finite  minds,  to  lose  themselves  in  wonder,  are  not 
required  to  imagine  any  rising  of  the  sloughed  and 
rotted  body  from  the  tomb.  When  the  Law  itself  is  so 
majestic,  why  search  for  any  more  astounding  majesty 
in  some  capricious  and  illogical  remission  of  the  Law? 
Why  seek  for  any  rising  from  the  dead,  in  a  world 
wherein  it  may  be,  on  occasion,  so  magnificent  a  thing 
to  die?  Why  accuse  God  of  committing  miracles,  when 
miracles  can  only  be  regarded  as  indications  of  a  mo- 
mentary change  of  mind? 

Mr.  Chesterton,  in  Magic,  has  asserted  that  a  man 
endowed  with  simple  and  enormous  faith  may — merely 
by  taking  thought,  and  without  recourse  in  any  way  at 
all  to  scientific  trickery — perform  a  miracle  whose 
causes  he  himself  is  utterly  incapable  of  fathoming. 
Mr.  Chesterton  believes  what  he  says, — even  as  the 
authors  of  the  early  gospels  believed  that  the  Great 
Person  whose  religion  they  were  trying  to  expound  was 
capable  of  turning  water  into  wine.  To  this  assumption 
that  the  Mind  of  God  descends,  upon  occasion,  to  in- 
dulge in  the  capricious  exercise  of  "  wilful  illegalities," 
the  present  writer  is  required  to  oppose  a  contrary 


106     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

belief.  To  put  the  matter  rather  poignantly — if  God 
has  time  enough  to  waste  on  such  trivial  trickery  as 
changing  a  red  lamp  into  a  blue  lamp  at  the  call  of  the 
conjurer  in  Mr.  Chesterton's  play,  how  does  it  happen 
that  He  was  too  busy,  at  the  moment,  to  prevent  the 
present  war?  The  trouble  with  any  idea  of  Deity  that 
is  too  intimate  and  personal  is  that  we  are  tempted  all 
too  easily  to  inquire  why  a  God  that  is  so  human  should 
care  so  little  about  ordinary  human  justice.  A  God 
like  Mr.  Chesterton's,  who  has  time  to  drop  in  of  an 
evening  for  a  personal  visit  to  the  drawing-room  of  a 
Duke,  ought  assuredly  to  be  able  to  attend  immediately 
to  such  matters  as  the  burning  of  Louvain  or  the  shat- 
tering of  Rheims  Cathedral  or  the  sinking  of  the 
Lusitania. 

But,  though  the  present  writer  disagrees  with  Mr. 
Chesterton's  religion,  he  is  ready  at  least  to  remove  his 
hat  in  Mr.  Chesterton's  presence,  because  of  the  unusual 
and,  in  consequence,  impressive  fact  that  Mr.  Chester- 
ton has  a  religion,  and  knows  what  it  is,  and  is  eager  to 
express  it  and  to  preach  it  with  enthusiasm. 


XV 

MIDDLE  CLASS  OPINION 

IN  their  mental  attitude  toward  any  subject,  all 
people  may  be  divided  into  three  classes,  which  may  be 
called  most  conveniently  by  those  terms  so  dear  to 
sociologists  and  snobs, — a  lower  class,  a  middle  class, 
and  an  upper  class.  The  lower  class  is  composed  of 
those  people  who  know  noticing  at  all  about  the  subject 
in  question;  the  middle  class  is  composed  of  those 
people  who  know  a  little  about  the  subject,  but  not 
much ;  and  the  upper  class  is  composed  of  those  people 
who  know  a  great  deal  about  it.  Any  single  individual 
may  hold  a  lower  class  opinion  on  one  subject,  a  middle 
class  opinion  on  another,  and  an  upper  class  opinion  on 
a  third.  Thus,  the  same  man  might  know  nothing  about 
poetry,  a  little  about  politics,  and  a  great  deal  about 
plumbing.  Again,  a  person  with  an  upper  class  opin- 
ion about  dogs  may  hold  a  lower  class  opinion  about 
dogmas.  Nearly  everybody  is  an  expert  in  his  line  and 
an  ignoramus  in  certain  other  lines ;  but,  toward  a  con- 
siderable number  of  intervening  matters,  nearly  every- 
body holds  a  middle  class  opinion, — the  opinion  of  one 
who  knows  a  little,  but  not  much. 

Every  work  of  art  appeals  for  the  approbation  of 
all  three  classes  of  observers — those  who  know  nothing 

107 


108     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

about  the  art  that  is  being  exercised,  those  who  know  a 
little  about  it,  and  those  who  know  a  great  deal  about  it. 
Every  professional  dancer,  for  example,  must  be  judged 
by  people  who  dance  well,  by  people  who  dance  a  little, 
and  by  people  who  do  not  dance  at  all.  If,  like  Mordkin 
or  Nijinsky,  he  can  capture  the  approbation  of  all 
three  classes  of  observers,  his  reputation  is  assured; 
but  such  an  absolute  and  undisputed  triumph  is  very 
rare  in  the  history  of  art. 

In  the  history  of  art,  it  frequently  happens  that  the 
opinion  of  the  lower  class  is  supported  and  affirmed 
by  the  opinion  of  the  upper  class.  The  adage  about 
the  meeting  of  extremes  is  curiously  sustained  by  this 
phenomenon.  But,  in  such  cases,  it  nearly  always 
happens  that  the  middle  class  dissents  sharply  from 
the  united  and  preponderant  opinion  of  those  who  know 
less  and  those  who  know  more.  Indeed,  the  statement 
may  be  ventured  that  the  mental  middle  class  is  nearly 
always  a  class  of  dissenters. 

Let  us  consider  how  this  formula  works  out  when 
applied  to  concrete  instances.  People  who  know  noth- 
ing about  painting  regard  the  efforts  of  the  cubists  as 
absurd;  people  who  know  a  great  deal  about  painting 
regard  them,  also,  as  absurd.  These  efforts  are  con- 
sidered seriously  only  by  people  who  know  a  little  about 
painting,  but  not  much.  "  A  little  knowledge  " — as  the 
most  common-sensible  of  English  poets  stated — "  is  a 
dangerous  thing."  Here  we  have  an  instance  of  the 
sharp  dissent  of  middle  class  opinion  from  the  united 
opinion  of  the  lower  and  the  upper  classes.  The  ex- 
tremes meet;  but  the  middle  term  refuses  to  conjoin. 


MIDDLE  CLASS  OPINION  109 

Again,  let  us  consider,  in  this  regard,  the  reputation 
of  Tennyson  as  a  writer.  Among  the  lower  class — the 
class  of  people  who  know  nothing  whatsoever  about  the 
art  of  writing — Tennyson  is  the  most  popular  of  all 
British  poets.  Among  the  upper  class — a  class  com- 
posed, in  this  instance,  of  the  twenty  people  in  England 
and  the  ten  people  in  America  who  know  how  to  write 
the  English  language — Tennyson  is  revered  as  the 
finest  artist  (with  the  certain  exception  of  Milton  and 
the  possible  exception  of  Keats)  in  the  entire  history 
of  English  verse.  In  this  case,  again,  the  few  experts 
agree  with  the  multitudinous  proletariat.  But  among 
the  middle  class — the  class  of  people  who  know  a  little 
about  writing,  but  not  much — the  perfect  art  of  Ten- 
nyson is  sneered  at  and  spoken  of  with  scorn.  Repre- 
sentatives of  middle  class  opinion  always  prefer  the 
artistry  of  Browning — or  say  that  they  do.  In  saying 
so,  and  thus  dissenting  from  the  opinion  of  the  lower 
class,  they  think  they  are  asserting  their  superiority. 
Little  do  they  realize  that,  at  the  same  time,  they  are 
emphasizing  their  inferiority  to  those  who  know  much 
more  than  they  do  about  the  art  of  writing. 

Browning  is  a  great  poet — a  greater  poet,  it  is  pos- 
sible, that  Tennyson — but  the  point  to  be  noted  in  the 
present  context  is  that  he  has  been  taken  up  by  the 
middle  class  of  readers  not  because  of  his  merits  as  a 
poet,  but  because  of  his  defects  as  a  writer.  Browning 
is  praised  by  the  middle  class  not  because  he  is  admired 
by  the  upper  class  but  because  he  is  not  admired  by  the 
lower  class.  The  cult  of  Browning  is  essentially  a  snob- 
bish cult, — a  cult  just  as  snobbish  as  that  undervalua- 


110     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

tion  of  the  art  of  Tennyson  which  has  arisen  merely 
from  an  ineradicable  spirit  of  dissent. 

Unfortunate  is  any  artist — even  though  he  be  so 
great  a  man  as  Browning — if  he  endures  the  danger  of 
being  praised  by  middle  class  opinion.  Such  a  man  is 
always  praised  for  his  defects, — the  faults  that  make 
him  different  and  queer.  The  mind  of  the  middle  class 
is  incapable  of  criticism.  The  lower  class — to  quote  a 
common  formula  of  words — may  not  know  anything 
about  art,  but  it  knows  what  it  likes  and  what  it  doesn't 
like;  and  this  knowledge  is  basically  human  and  essen- 
tially sincere.  The  upper  class  is  capable  of  criticism 
on  a  higher  plane.  Any  man  who  has  ever  written  a 
good  sentence  [such  men  are  very  rare]  knows  that 
Tennyson  can  write,  because  he  knows  that  Tennyson 
can  beat  him  at  a  difficult  endeavor  that,  in  Dante's 
phrase,  has  kept  him  lean  for  twenty  years.  But  people 
of  the  middle  class  pride  themselves  mainly  on  liking 
things  that  other  people  do  not  like.  Their  favorite 
adjective  is  "  different."  They  flatter  themselves  by 
propagating  fads. 

This  analysis  will  help  us  to  define  the  position  of 
Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  in  the  contemporary  English-speak- 
ing theatre.  Both  lower  class  and  upper  class  opin- 
ion set  him  lower  than  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  and  Mr. 
Henry  Arthur  Jones;  but  he  is  set  much  higher  than 
either  of  these  rivals  in  the  opinion  of  the  middle  class. 
[It  should,  perhaps,  be  noted  in  parenthesis  that  Sir 
James  Barrie  is  exempted  from  this  comparison  because 
it  has  been  his  fortune  to  secure  the  equal  approbation 
01  all  three  classes  of  opinion.]  People  who  know 


MIDDLE  CLASS  OPINION  111 

nothing  about  the  drama  prefer  Pinero  and  Jones  to 
Shaw;  people  who  know  a  great  deal  about  the  drama 
prefer  Pinero  and  Jones  to  Shaw ;  but  people  who  know 
a  little  about  the  drama,  but  not  much,  always  prefer — 
or  say  that  they  prefer — Shaw  to  Pinero  and  Jones. 
The  sort  of  people  who  organize  Browning  Circles  never 
read  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray  or  The  Liars;  they 
always  read  Getting  Married,  and  pride  themselves  on 
"  being  different." 

The  preference  of  lower  class  opinion  for  Pinero  and 
Jones  is  indicated  by  statistics.  For  every  hundred 
performances  of  the  plays  of  Mr.  Shaw  throughout  the 
English-speaking  world,  a  thousand  performances  of  the 
plays  of  Pinero  and  Jones  have  been  demanded.  This 
popular  verdict  would  not  be  so  impressive  were  it  not 
supported  and  affirmed  by  the  verdict  of  the  upper 
class.  Suppose  we  should  select  the  very  best  play  of 
each  of  these  three  dramatists :  in  the  case  of  Mr.  Shaw, 
the  selection  would  be  Candida;  in  the  case  of  Mr. 
Jones,  it  would  be  Michael  and  His  Lost  Angel;  and, 
in  the  case  of  Sir  Arthur  Pinero,  it  would  be  either 
The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray,  Iris,  Mid-Channel,  or  The 
Thunderbolt:  and  suppose  that  these  plays  should  be 
submitted  to  a  jury  of  experts  composed  of  the  twenty 
foremost  dramatists  and  dramatic  critics  in  England 
and  the  ten  foremost  dramatists  and  dramatic  critics 
in  America.  There  can  be  no  question  that,  in  the 
verdict  of  this  jury,  Mr.  Shaw  would  come  out  third, — 
just  as  he  has  come  out  third  in  the  vote  that  has  been 
recorded  by  the  lower  class. 

The  man  who  knows  a  great  deal  is  never  made  bash- 


112     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

ful  by  agreeing  with  the  man  who  knows  nothing  at  all. 
It  is  only  the  man  who  knows  a  little,  but  not  much,  who 
feels  uncomfortable  in  conformity.  Mr.  Shaw  is  lauded 
as  the  foremost  English  playwright  of  the  day  only  by 
people  who  are  conscious  that  they  are  disagreeing 
with  the  lower  class  but  are  utterly  unconscious  that 
they  are  also  disagreeing  with  the  upper  class. 

It  has  been  the  misfortune  of  Mr.  Shaw  to  assemble 
and  to  concentrate  the  admiration  of  a  special  public, — 
a  public  that  is  composed  almost  entirely  of  people  of 
the  mental  middle  class.  This  fact  is  a  misfortune,  be- 
cause— to  repeat  a  previous  statement — the  mind  of 
the  middle  class  is  incapable  of  criticism.  When  Pinero 
and  Jones  write  bad  plays,  like  A  Wife  Without  a 
Smile  or  Lydia  Gilmore,  these  plays  are  rejected  by 
the  lower  class  and  condemned  by  the  upper  class ;  but 
when  Shaw  writes  a  bad  play,  like  Misalliance,  it  is 
praised  by  his  special  public  in  precisely  the  same  terms 
that  have  been  applied  to  his  good  plays,  like  Man  and 
Superman.  No  middle  class  person  would  dare  to  say 
that  a  bad  play  by  Mr.  Shaw  was  a  bad  play ;  because, 
by  doing  so,  he  would  relinquish  his  assumption  of 
superiority  over  the  lower  class. 

The  thing  called  "  fashion  "  is  always  a  function  of 
the  middle  class.  A  workman  wears  a  flannel  shirt  when 
he  wants  to ;  an  aristocrat  wears  a  flannel  shirt  when  he 
wants  to;  but  a  middle  class  person  does  not  dare  ap- 
pear in  public  without  a  linen  collar.  To  assert  his 
social  superiority  to  the  workman  he  is  obliged  to  con- 
fess his  social  inferiority  to  the  aristocrat.  It  is  the 
same  in  matters  of  opinion  regarding  art.  A  middle 


MIDDLE  CLASS  OPINION  113 

class  person  prides  himself  on  disagreeing  with  the 
lower  class  when  he  asserts  that  Candida  is  more  "  in- 
tellectual," more  "  literary,"  more  "  paradoxical,"  more 
heaven-knows-what,  than  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray. 
Meanwhile,  the  greater  play  is  valued  more  highly,  not 
only  by  the  many  whom  this  middle  class  dissenter 
prides  himself  on  looking  down  upon,  but  also  by  the 
few  who,  without  pride  and  without  protest,  look  down 
upon  him  with  an  unobserved,  indulgent  smile. 

To  say  that  it  is  fashionable  to  praise  Mr.  Shaw  is, 
therefore,  only  another  way  of  saying  that  his  plays 
are  commonly  regarded  as  exempt  from  criticism.  The 
middle  class  assumes  that,  like  a  king,  Mr.  Shaw  can 
do  no  wrong.  The  lower  class,  knowing  nothing  of 
kings,  still  knows  that  they  are  not  infallible ;  the  upper 
class,  knowing  kings  particularly  well,  also  knows  that 
they  are  not  infallible ;  no  king  is  a  hero  to  his  valet — 
or  his  queen:  but  the  middle  class  plumps  itself  upon 
its  knees  and  tries  to  persuade  itself  that  a  king  must 
always  be  immune  from  criticism.  Mr.  Shaw  has  made 
himself  a  king  in  the  imagination  of  the  middle  class  of 
theatre-goers.  It  is  the  danger  of  kings  that  they  may 
come  to  look  upon  themselves  through  the  eyes  of  their 
admirers, — that  they  may  come  to  regard  themselves 
with  a  middle  class  opinion.  It  is  evident  from  the 
prefaces  of  Mr.  Shaw  that  he  has  latterly  assumed  a 
middle  class  opinion  of  himself.  This  has  been  bad  for 
his  art.  In  his  estimation  of  his  own  work,  a  man  should 
be  influenced  by  the  opinion  of  people  who  know  noth- 
ing; he  should  also  be  influenced  by  the  opinion  of 
people  who  know  a  great  deal :  but  when  he  accepts  the 


114     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

opinion  of  people  who  know  a  little,  but  not  much,  his 
work  must  suffer.  In  such  a  case,  there  is  a  loss  to  him ; 
but,  alas !,  there  is  a  greater  loss  to  humanity  at  large. 

Mr.  Shaw's  Pygmalion,  for  instance,  is  one  of  the 
most  delightful  entertainments  of  recent  seasons;  but 
it  is  not  a  great  play.  If  one  were  to  judge  it  only  by 
comparison  with  the  majority  of  comedies  that  some- 
how get  themselves  presented  in  the  theatres  of  New 
York,  one  would  have  to  rank  it  very  high  indeed ;  'but 
it  does  not  rank  so  very  high  when  it  is  judged  by  com- 
parison with  Mr.  Shaw's  best  work,  or  with  the  best 
work  of  his  rivals. 

What  it  lacks,  primarily,  is  structure.  Each  of  the 
five  acts  presents  an  incident  in  dialogue;  but,  though 
these  incidents  succeed  each  other  like  the  chapters  of 
a  novel,  they  are  not  bound  together  tightly  like  the 
incidents  in  Candida.  A  spectator  might  step  in  for 
any  single  act,  and  go  away  again  with  a  sense  that  he 
had  seen  a  one-act  play. 

One  of  the  most  amusing  characters — the  father  of 
the  heroine — performs  no  necessary  purpose  in  the  pat- 
tern. If  he  were  left  out  of  the  cast  some  evening,  the 
audience  would  never  know  the  difference;  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  he  might  be  introduced  with  equal  perti- 
nence into  any  other  play  of  Mr.  Shaw's. 

But  Mr.  Shaw  most  disappoints  the  critical  observer 
when,  finding  himself  face  to  face  with  a  great  dramatic 
situation,  he  shrugs  his  shoulders  and  refuses  to  wrestle 
with  it  like  an  artist  and  a  man.  His  Pygmalion  is  a 
professor  of  phonetics;  and  his  Galatea  is  a  gutter- 
girl  whom  the  professor  has  transformed  into  an  ac- 


MIDDLE  CLASS  OPINION  115 

ceptable  imitation  of  a  Duchess  by  devoting  six  months 
to  the  task  of  teaching  her  the  vocal  intonations  of  the 
aristocracy.  But  the  transformation  has  struck  deeper 
than  Pygmalion  had  anticipated;  and  Galatea  has 
developed  the  glimmerings  of  a  human  soul.  It  happens 
that  whoever  calls  a  human  soul  into  existence,  whether 
inadvertently  or  by  intention,  must  assume  responsi- 
bility for  that  soul's  continuance  and  sustenance. 
"  What  are  you  going  to  do  with  me  now?,"  Mr.  Shaw's 
Galatea  asks,  in  effect,  of  his  Pygmalion.  The  pro- 
fessor of  phonetics  does  not  know.  Neither  does  Mr. 
Shaw.  The  playwright  shuffles,  and  evades  the  issue, 
and  rings  the  curtain  down. 

In  other  words,  Mr.  Shaw  ran  away  from  a  dramatic 
opportunity  which,  if  it  had  fallen  to  Pinero,  would 
have  imposed  an  extra  year  of  meditation,  out  of  which 
a  great  play  would  probably  have  emerged.  But  Mr. 
Shaw,  having  been  amusing  for  two  hours,  was  con- 
tented to  let  the  matter  go  at  that.  He  is  an  entertain- 
ing artist,  surely;  but  a  great  artist? — not  at  all. 


XVI 
CRITICISM  AND  CREATION  IN  THE  DRAMA 

BRANDEE  MATTHEWS,  not  many  years  ago,  in  review- 
ing a  book  on  Types  of  Tragic  Drama  by  the  Professor 
of  English  Literature  in  the  University  of  Leeds,  de- 
fined it  as  an  essay  in  "  undramatic  criticism."  The 
author  of  that  academic  volume  had  persistently  re- 
garded the  drama  as  something  written  to  be  read, 
instead  of  regarding  it  as  something  devised  to  be  pre- 
sented by  actors  on  a  stage  before  an  audience.  His 
criticism,  therefore,  took  no  account  of  the  conditions 
precedent  to  any  valid  exercise  of  the  art  that  he  was 
criticising. 

The  contemporary  drama  suffers  more  than  that  of 
any  other  period  from  the  comments  of  "  undramatic 
critics  "  who  know  nothing  of  the  exigencies  of  the 
theatre.  In  the  first  place,  the  contemporary  drama  is 
more  visual  in  its  appeal  than  the  drama  of  the  past, 
and  what  it  says  emphatically  to  the  eye  can  hardly  be 
recorded  adequately  on  the  printed  page.  In  the  second 
place,  the  rapid  evolution  of  the  modern  art  of  stage- 
direction  has  made  the  drama  more  and  more,  in  recent 
years,  unprintable.  And,  in  the  third  place,  the  con- 
temporary drama,  with  its  full  and  free  discussion  of 

116 


CRITICISM  AND  CREATION  117 

topics  that  are  current  in  the  public  mind,  requires — 
more  than  that  of  any  other  period — the  immediate 
collaboration  of  a  gathered  audience.  Such  a  drama 
can  be  judged  with  fairness  only  in  the  theatre,  for 
which  it  was  devised. 

The  fallacy  of  "  undramatic  criticism  "  of  contem- 
porary drama  is  a  fallacy  to  which  professors  in  our 
universities  are  particularly  prone.  The  reason  is  not 
far  to  seek.  The  prison-house  of  their  profession  con- 
fines them,  for  the  most  part,  to  little  towns  and  little 
cities  where  no  actual  theatre,  that  is  worthy  of  the 
name,  exists.  Condemned  to  see  nothing  of  the  current 
theatre,  they  are  driven  back  to  the  library,  to  cull 
their  knowledge  of  the  modern  drama  from  the  dubious 
records  of  the  printed  page.  Thus,  in  the  enforced  and 
tragic  solitude  of  Leeds  or  Oklahoma,  they  are  doomed 
to  arrive  at  the  opinion  that  Bernard  Shaw,  whose 
plays  are  published,  must  be  a  greater  dramatist  than 
J.  M.  Barrie,  whose  best  plays  have  not  yet  been  yanked 
and  carted  from  the  living  theatre  to  find  a  sort  of 
graveyard  in  the  printed  page. 

In  an  interesting  and  well-written  book  about  The 
Modern  Drama,  by  Professor  Ludwig  Lewisohn  of  the 
Ohio  State  University,  there  is  a  chapter  of  fifty-three 
pages  devoted  to  "  The  Renaissance  of  the  English 
Drama."  In  this  chapter,  the  author  expresses  the 
opinion  that  the  work  of  Pinero  and  Jones  is  of  no 
account  whatever,  because,  writing  drama,  they  choose 
to  be  dramatic,  and,  writing  for  the  theatre,  they  choose 
to  be  theatrical.  He  prefers  the  plays  of  Galsworthy, 
Barker,  and  Shaw,  because  these  plays  are  less  theatri- 


118     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

cal  and  less  dramatic.  With  this  argument — despite  its 
paradox — it  is  not  at  all  impossible  to  sympathize.  It 
is  possible,  for  instance,  to  remember  a  sudden  entry 
into  the  vestibule  of  the  Laurentian  Library  in  Flor- 
ence, which  induced  an  unexpected  singing  of  the  soul 
in  praise  of  Michelangelo  because,  although  an  archi- 
tect, he  had  dared  for  once  to  do  a  thing  that  was  not 
architectural  at  all.  But  the  reader  loses  faith  in  the 
leading  of  Professor  Lewisohn  when  the  discovery  is 
ultimately  made  that,  in  this  entire  chapter  of  fifty- 
three  pages,  the  name  of  J.  M.  Barrie  has  never  once 
been  mentioned. 

In  an  equally  interesting  and  still  more  monumental 
book  on  Aspects  of  Modern  Drama,  by  Frank  Wad- 
leigh  Chandler,  Dean  of  the  University  of  Cincinnati,  no 
less  than  two  hundred  and  eighty  contemporary  plays 
have  been  minutely  analyzed.  This  book  is  supple- 
mented by  an  exhaustive  bibliography  of  the  modern 
drama  which  covers  fifty-six  closely  printed  pages  of 
small  type.  Yet  nowhere,  in  the  text  or  in  the  bibliog- 
raphy, is  J.  M.  Barrie  mentioned  as  a  modern  drama- 
tist. In  this  scholarly  and  weighty  treatise,  the  man 
who  imagined  Peter  Pan  is  utterly  ignored. 

In  another  recent  volume,  called  The  Changing 
Drama,  by  Professor  Archibald  Henderson,  of  the  Uni- 
versity of  North  Carolina,  an  attempt  has  been  made — 
according  to  the  preface — "  to  deal  with  the  contem- 
porary drama,  not  as  a  kingdom  subdivided  between  a 
dozen  leading  playwrights,  but  as  a  great  movement, 
exhibiting  the  evolutional  growth  of  the  human  spirit 
and  the  enlargement  of  the  domain  of  esthetics."  Yet, 


CRITICISM  AND  CREATION  119 

in  this  volume  of  three  hundred  and  eleven  pages,  the 
name  of  J.  M.  Barrie  never  once  appears. 

Can  it  be  that  three  scholars  so  well  informed  as 
Professor  Lewisohn,  Professor  Chandler,  and  Professor 
Henderson  have  never  heard  of  J.  M.  Barrie?  It  may 
be  that  such  a  masterpiece  as  Alice  Sit-By-TTie-Fire — 
which  has  not  been  published — has  never  been  per- 
formed in  Columbus,  Ohio,  Cincinnati,  Ohio,  or  Chapel 
Hill,  North  Carolina:  but  is  that  any  reason  why  a 
scholarly  professor,  condemned  to  live  in  the  prison- 
house  of  one  of  these  localities,  should  presume  to  write 
a  comprehensive  book  about  the  current  drama  with- 
out so  much  as  mentioning  the  name  of  the  best-beloved 
of  modern  dramatists, — a  man,  moreover,  who  is  fa- 
mous in  the  world  of  letters  and  has  been  made  a  baro- 
net because  of  his  services,  through  art,  to  humankind? 
These  academic  commentators  should  remember  that 
their  books  may  possibly  be  read  by  certain  people  who 
live  in  London  and  New  York,  and  who  have  never 
missed  a  play  of  Barrie's,  because  his  excellence  has 
long  been  recognized  by  all  dramatic  critics,  because 
every  woman  knows  that  he  is  the  wisest  of  contempo- 
rary dramatists,  and  because  every  child  perceives  that 
he  is  easily  the  most  enjoyable. 

In  those  books  about  the  modern  drama  in  which  the 
name  of  Barrie  is  astoundingly  ignored,  the  name  of 
Bernard  Shaw  is  invariably  mentioned  with  ecstatic 
praise.  Of  all  contemporary  dramatists,  Shaw  is  easily 
the  favorite  among  the  professors  of  "  undramatic  criti- 
cism." Before  we  read  their  books,  we  may  always 
count  upon  them  to  consider  Candida  a  greater  play 


120     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

than  Iris,  and  You  Never  Can  Tell  a  better  comedy  than 
The  Liars,  and  Fanny's  First  Play  a  subtler  satire  than 
Alice  Sit-By-The-Fire.  What  can  be  the  reason  for 
this  curious  reaction  of  the  "  undramatic  critics  "? 

Two  answers  to  this  interesting  question  suggest 
themselves  to  an  investigating  mind.  The  first  answer 
is  comparatively  trivial;  but  it  is  not,  by  any  means, 
too  silly  to  demand  consideration. 

In  all  these  academic  books  about  the  modern  drama, 
the  ranking  of  the  living  British  dramatists  is  propor- 
tioned directly  in  accordance  to  the  pompousness  with 
which  their  plays  have  been  printed  and  bound  and 
published  to  the  reading  world.  This  "  undramatic 
criticism  "  of  the  current  drama  appears,  upon  inves- 
tigation, to  be  based  on  nothing  more  than  the  setting- 
up  of  type. 

When  the  early  plays  of  Bernard  Shaw  were  unsuc- 
cessful in  the  theatre  [at  a  time  when  Pinero  and  Jones 
were  being  rewarded  by  their  greatest  triumphs]  the 
disappointed  dramatist  decided  to  make  an  untradi- 
tional  attack  upon  the  reading  public..  He  equipped  his 
plays  with  elaborately  literary  stage-directions  [the 
sort  of  stage-directions  which,  though  interesting  to 
the  reader,  are  of  no  avail  whatever  to  the  actor]  ;  he 
furnished  them  with  lengthy  prefaces,  in  many  instances 
more  interesting  than  the  plays  themselves ;  and  he 
gathered  them  into  volumes  that  were  printed  and 
bound  up  to  look  like  books.  These  volumes,  impres- 
sive in  appearance  and  enlivening  in  content,  were 
undeniably  worth  reading.  They  earned  at  once  the 
right  to  be  accepted  as  "  literature  " ;  and,  among  non- 


CRITICISM  AND  CREATION  121 

theatre-goers,  they  soon  came  to  be  regarded  as  the  best 
contemporary  contributions  to  "  dramatic  literature." 

Meanwhile — among  non-theatre-goers — the  bigger 
and  better  plays  of  Jones  and  of  Pinero  were  not  ac- 
cepted as  "  dramatic  literature,"  because  they  hap- 
pened only  to  be  published  in  a  form  that  made  them 
look  like  plays  instead  of  in  a  form  that  made  them 
look  like  books.  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray  and  Mrs. 
Dane's  Defence  were  bound  in  paper  covers  and  sold  for 
twenty-five  or  fifty  cents.  The  stage-directions  were 
written  technically  for  the  actor,  instead  of  being  writ- 
ten more  elaborately  for  the  reader ;  and  there  were  no 
prefaces  whatever,  to  celebrate  the  greatness  of  the 
plays.  No  wonder,  therefore,  that  the  "  undramatic 
critics  "  of  the  drama  decided  that  the  plays  of  Pinero 
and  Jones  were  less  important  than  the  plays  of  Shaw ! 
It  was  all  a  matter  of  the  make-up  of  the  printed  page ! 

John  Galsworthy  and  Granville  Barker  have  followed 
the  fashion  set  by  Bernard  Shaw,  in  publishing  their 
plays.  Barker's  printed  stage-directions  are  little 
novels  in  themselves.  In  consequence,  Professor  Ludwig 
Lewisohn  considers  Barker  a  greater  dramatist  than 
Pinero  or  Jones.  No  play  of  Granville  Barker's  has 
ever  held  the  stage,  in  any  city,  for  three  successive 
weeks ;  yet  Professor  Lewisohn  decides  that  The  Madras 
House  must  be  a  greater  play  than  The  Second  Mrs. 
Tanqueray  [which  has  held  the  stage,  throughout  the 
English-speaking  world,  for  more  than  twenty  years], 
because  the  published  text  of  The  Madras  House  looks 
like  a  book  and  the  published  text  of  The  Second  Mrs. 
Tanqueray  does  not. 


122      PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

Barrie,  of  course,  receives  no  consideration  whatso- 
ever from  the  "  undramatic  critics,"  because  his  best 
plays  have  never  yet  been  printed.  Peter  Pan,  which 
is  acted  every  Christmas-tide  in  London  before  thou- 
sands and  thousands  of  delighted  spectators,  must  be 
dismissed  as  negligible,  for  the  accidental  reason  that  a 
printed  record  of  the  lines  has  not  been  bound  between 
cloth  covers  and  offered  to  the  reading  public  as  a  work 
of  literature. 

But  we  must  turn  attention  now  to  a  deeper,  and  a 
less  facetious,  explanation  of  the  reason  why  the  "  un- 
dramatic critics  "  prefer  the  plays  of  Bernard  Shaw  to 
the  plays  of  J.  M.  Barrie.  They  prefer  the  plays  of 
Shaw  because,  to  the  academic  and  the  non-theatric 
mind,  these  plays  are  much  more  easy  to  appreciate. 

Shaw  began  life  as  a  critic;  and,  ever  since  he  took 
to  writing  plays,  he  has  remained  a  critic.  But  Barrie 
began  life  as  a  creative  artist;  and,  ever  since  he  took 
to  writing  plays,  he  has  remained  a  creative  artist. 
Among  minds,  the  ancient  maxim  holds  irrevocably — 
like  to  like.  It  may  be  safely  said  that  no  academic 
scholar  is  endowed  with  a  creative  mind ;  for  any  per- 
son so  endowed  would  not  permit  himself  to  be  an  aca- 
demic scholar.  As  Bernard  Shaw  himself  has  stated, 
"  He  who  can,  does :  he  who  cannot,  teaches."  From 
academic  scholars,  therefore,  we  cannot  logically  look 
for  a  spontaneous  appreciation  of  creative  art:  all  we 
can  expect  is  a  critical  appreciation  of  criticism. 

The  basic  aims  of  criticism  and  creation  are,  of 
course,  identical.  The  purpose  of  all  art,  whether 
critical  or  creative,  is  to  reveal  the  reality  that  under- 


CRITICISM  AND  CREATION  123 

lies  the  jumbled  and  inconsequential  facts  of  actual 
experience.  Art  makes  life  more  intelligible,  by  refus- 
ing to  be  interested  in  the  accidental  and  fortuitous, 
and  by  focusing  attention  on  the  permanent  and  true. 
But  this  common  aim  of  art  is  approached  from  two 
directions,  diametrically  different,  by  men  whose  minds 
are  critical  and  by  men  whose  minds  are  creative. 

The  critic  makes  life  more  intelligible  by  taking  the 
elements  of  actuality  apart ;  and  the  creator  makes  life 
more  intelligible  by  putting  the  elements  of  reality 
together.  In  a  precisely  scientific  sense,  the  work  of 
the  creator  is  constructive  and  the  work  of  the  critic  is 
destructive.  The  critic'  analyzes  life ;  the  creator  syn- 
thetizes  it. 

The  difference  between  these  diametric  processes  may 
perhaps  be  made  more  clear  by  a  concrete  scientific 
illustration.  Suppose  the  truth  to  be  investigated  were 
the  composition  of  the  substance  known  as  water.  The 
critic  would  determine  this  truth  by  taking  some  water 
and  dividing  it  up  into  two  parts  of  hydrogen  and  one 
of  oxygen;  but  the  creator  would  establish  the  same 
truth  by  taking  two  parts  of  hydrogen  and  one  of 
oxygen  and  manufacturing  some  water  by  putting  them 
together. 

That  Bernard  Shaw  is  the  keenest-minded  critic  who 
is  writing  for  the  stage  to-day,  no  commentator  could 
be  tempted  to  deny;  but  he  is  not  a  creative  artist,  in 
the  sense  that  Barrie — for  example — is  a  creative  art- 
ist. Shaw  takes  the  elements  of  life  apart ;  but  Barrie 
puts  the  elements  of  life  together. 

This  proposition  has  been  admirably  stated  by  Pro- 


124      PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

fessor  Ludwig  Lewisohn,  who  is  one  of  Shaw's  most 
ardent  celebrators.  In  a  notably  clear-minded  pas- 
sage, Professor  Lewisohn  has  said : — "  This  remark- 
able writer  is  not,  in  the  stricter  sense,  a  creative  artist 
at  all.  The  sharp  contemporaneousness  and  vividness 
of  his  best  settings  deceives  us.  His  plays  are  the 
theatre  of  the  analytic  intellect,  not  the  drama  of  man. 
They  are  a  criticism  of  life,  not  in  the  sense  of  Arnold, 
but  in  the  plain  and  literal  one.  His  place  is  with 
Lucian  rather  than  with  Moliere." 

The  same  commentator  has  clearly  pointed  out  that 
Shaw  is  incapable  of  creating  characters  that  may  be 
imagined  to  live  their  own  lives  outside  the  limits  of  the 
plays  in  which  they  figure.  Instead  of  launching  a 
living  person  into  the  immortal  world  of  the  imagina- 
tion, Shaw  writes  an  analytic  essay  on  his  character 
and  sends  him  forth  upon  the  stage  to  speak  it.  In 
Pygmalion,  for  instance,  when  the  cockney  father  of 
the  heroine  remarks  that  he  is  "  one  of  the  undeserving 
poor,"  we  know  at  once  that  he  is  not ;  for  no  member  of 
that  human  confraternity  could  possibly  be  capable  of 
such  a  masterly  self-criticism.  When  the  greengrocer 
in  Getting  Married  says,  in  describing  his  own  wife, 
"  She's  a  born  wife  and  mother,  ma'am :  that's  why  my 
children  ran  away  from  home,"  we  accept  the  witticism 
for  all  that  it  is  worth;  but  we  know,  from  that  mo- 
ment, that  the  greengrocer  is  not  a  greengrocer,  but 
merely  a  mouthpiece  for  an  essayist  whose  initials 
are  G.B.S. 

The  method  of  J.  M.  Barrie  is  diametrically  different, 
because  it  is  utterly  creative.  In  What  Every  Woman 


CRITICISM  AND  CREATION  125 

Knows,  the  humble  but  sagacious  heroine  has  recou 
ciled  herself  to  the  prospect  of  permitting  her  husband 
to  elope  with  the  more  attractive  Lady  Sybil  Lazenby ; 
but  suddenly  she  says  to  them,  "  You  had  better  not 
go  away  till  Saturday,  for  that's  the  day  when  the 
laundry  comes  home."  In  A  Kiss  for  Cinderella,  the 
Policeman  sits  down  to  write  a  love-letter  for  the  first 
time  in  his  life;  and  this  is  what  he  writes, — "There 
are  thirty-four  policemen  sitting  in  this  room,  but  I 
would  rather  have  you,  my  dear."  These  people  are 
alive.  They  do  not  have  to  tell  us  anything  about 
themselves ;  and  the  author  does  not  have  to  tell  us 
anything  about  them. 

No  dramatist  who  lacks  the  primal  gift  of  sponta- 
neous and  absolute  creation — however  brilliant  be  his 
talents  as  a  critic — can  finally  be  ranked  among  the 
greatest.  For  this  reason,  the  plays  of  Bernard  Shaw 
will  ultimately  be  regarded  as  inferior  to  the  plays  of 
J.  M.  Barrie,  and  the  best  plays  of  Pinero  and  of  Jones, 
and  the  few  good  plays  of  Galsworthy.  All  these  other 
dramatists  have  brought  us  face  to  face  with  many 
characters  whom  we  know  to  be  alive;  and  Bernard 
Shaw  has  not. 

In  New  York,  throughout  the  early  months  of  1917, 
it  was  possible  to  see  one  night  an  excellent  perform- 
ance of  Getting  Married  and  to  see  the  next  night  an 
excellent  performance  of  A  Kiss  for  Cinderella.  Any 
open-minded  person  who  afforded  himself  the  luxury  of 
this  experience  must  have  felt  inclined  to  rush  home  to 
his  library  and  throw  the  learned  books  of  Professor 
Lewisohn,  Professor  Chandler,  and  Professor  Hender- 


126     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

son  out  of  the  window  into  the  star-lit  and  unrestricted 
street.  It  must,  in  all  fairness,  be  admitted  that  Get- 
ting Married  shows  Shaw  very  nearly  at  his  worst  and 
that  A  Kiss  for  Cinderella  shows  Barrie  very  nearly  at 
his  best;  but  the  contrast,  after  all,  is  less  a  contrast 
of  quality  than  a  contrast  of  method.  Barrie  creates 
life,  and  Shaw  discusses  it;  and  the  difference  is  just  as 
keen  as  the  difference  between  a  woman  who  gives  birth 
to  a  child  and  a  woman  who  merely  appears  upon  the 
platform  and  delivers  a  lecture  on  the  subject  of  birth- 
control. 

Externally — in  what  Hamlet  would  have  called 
"  their  trappings  and  their  suits  " — Getting  Married  is 
a  realistic  play  that  apes  the  actual,  and  A  Kiss  for 
Cinderella  is  a  romantic  play  that  flies  with  freedom 
through  the  realm  of  fancy.  But — considered  in  their 
ultimate  significance — it  is  the  realistic  play  that  is  the 
more  fantastic,  and  it  is  the  play  of  fancy  that  is  finally 
more  real  than  its  competitor.  We  believe  A  Kiss  for 
Cinderella,  because  we  know,  as  Barrie  knows,  that 
nothing  in  life  is  true  but  what  has  been  imagined; 
and  we  do  not  believe  the  text  of  Getting  Married, 
because  we  know  that  people,  in  a  crisis  of  their  lives, 
are  not  accustomed  to  sit  down  calmly  and  discuss  their 
motives  in  a  mood  of  critical  intelligence. 

Shaw  attacks  life  with  his  intellect ;  Barrie  caresses 
life  with  his  emotions.  Shaw  will  always  be  admired 
most  by  scholars  and  professors  and  "  undramatic 
critics,"  who  make  their  living  by  their  intellects  and, 
in  consequence,  are  prejudiced  in  favor  of  intelligence. 
But  Barrie  will  always  be  admired  most  by  women  and 


CRITICISM  AND  CREATION  127 

children  and  poets,  who  feel  that  the  emotions  are 
wiser  than  the  intellect,  and  who  know — without  dis- 
cussion— that  the  greatest  reason  for  the  greatest 
things  is  incorporated  always  in  the  single,  mystic 
word, — "  because  ..." 


XVII 

• 

A  KISS  FOR  CINDERELLA 

IF  millions  and  millions  of  lilies-of-the-valley  were 
miraculously  turned  to  silver  and  simultaneously 
shaken,  there  would  arise  a  light  and  laughing  music  in 
the  world, — a  music  so  delicate  that  it  would  be  inaudi- 
ble to  ears  that  cannot  hear.  Whole  nations  [which  are 
nameless]  would  not  hear  it,  because  their  ears  are 
thunderous  with  cannon  and  their  mouths  are  noisy 
with  a  blasphemous  appeal  for  peace.  But  elsewhere, 
where  the  world  is  quiet,  many  lovely  things  would 
happen;  and  some  of  them  are  these: — 

First  of  all,  the  infant  children,  too  soft  as  yet  to  sit 
up  and  take  notice  of  anything  but  light  and  sound, 
would  turn  their  tiny  heads  upon  their  necks  and  smile 
as  if  in  memory  of  a  noble  thought,  heard  somewhere 
long  ago.  Next,  the  Little  People,  whose  other  name 
is  Fairies,  and  who  live  forever  in  the  minds  of  those 
who  cannot  quite  forget,  would  troop  out  under  leaves 
and  petals,  and  join  their  hands  and  dance  around  in 
rings.  And  high,  high  up  beyond  the  tree-tops,  the 
ever-circling  stars  would  sing  as  once  they  sang  upon 
the  primal  morning,  ere  yet  the  universe  grew  old.  And 
everywhere  beneath  the  circling  and  the  singing  of  the 

128 


A  KISS  FOR  CINDERELLA  129 

stars,  the  Tall  People,  whose  other  name  is  Poets,  would 
listen  and  would  softly  smile  and  exquisitely  weep. 

Whenever  a  Great  Work  is  accomplished  by  a  Great 
Man,  it  is  as  if  a  million  lilies-of-the-valley  were  shaken 
to  a  silver  singing;  and  then  it  is  that  tears  are  called 
into  the  eyes  of  the  Tall  People,  whose  other  name  you 
know. 

"  If  you  have  tears,"  by  all  means  go  and  shed  them 
as  a  sort  of  exquisite  libation  to  the  latest  masterpiece 
of  Sir  James  Matthew  Barrie,  Baronet  [for  services  to 
humankind]  ;  but,  if  you  have  not  tears,  by  all  means 
stay  away  and  make  room  for  the  rest  of  us  who  want 
to  blow  a  kiss  to  Cinderella.  It  would  seem,  in  solemn 
justice,  that  no  man  should  really  have  a  right  to  make 
so  beautiful  a  play.  The  undeniably  accomplished  fact 
is  too  discouraging  to  all  the  rest  of  us,  who  would  like 
to  make  good  plays,  if  only  our  reach  did  not  exceed 
our  grasp.  The  perfect  fact,  no  less,  is  discouraging 
to  criticism ;  for,  after  seeing  A  Kiss  for  Cinderella,  it 
seems  so  very  silly  to  sit  down  and  try  to  write  about 
it  without  first  borrowing  or  stealing  the  little  Scots- 
man's magic  pen.  It  is  only  an  ordinary  fountain- 
pen, — or  so  it  seems ;  but  the  little  Scotsman  has  been 
canny,  and  has  fixed  a  lock  upon  it  which  prohibits  it, 
from  flowing  for  anybody  else.  And  that  is  very  much 
too  bad;  for  it  is  very  difficult,  with  any  other  pen,  to 
try  to  tell  the  story  of  A  Kiss  for  Cinderella. — 

Her  name  was  Miss  Thing,  and  she  was  a  little  slavey 
in  a  London  lodging-house,  and  her  face  did  not  amount 
to  much,  but  she  had  very  small  and  very  pretty  feet. 
It  must  have  been  upon  her  feet  that  God  had  kissed 


130     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

her,  that  day  when  she  had  come  new-born  into  the 
world;  and  doubtless  that  was  one  of  God's  very  busy 
days,  when  He  had  to  hurry  on.  [Some  days,  God 
grows  a  little  absent-minded,  because  so  many  Emperors 
and  Kings  are  calling  all-too-loudly  on  His  name,  and 
the  Celestial  Telephone  is  kept  jangling  all  day  long  by 
people  who  have  got  the  wrong  number.]  That  is  the 
only  reason  I  can  think  of  why  Miss  Thing  wasn't  much 
to  look  upon  above  her  ankles.  But  don't  forget  her 
very  small  and  very  pretty  feet ;  for  otherwise  the  story 
might  not  happen. 

The  room  she  liked  to  sweep  out  more  than  any  other 
was  a  queer  place  called  a  studio,  which  sat  high  up 
beneath  the  skylight  of  the  London  lodging-house ;  for 
here  lived  Mr.  Bodie.  Bodie  is  a  rather  funny  name; 
and  Mr.  Bodie  was  a  rather  funny  man,  for  he  painted 
pictures  and  told  stories,  and  preferred  to  live,  instead 
of  working  for  his  living.  He  lived  with  a  life-sized 
plaster  cast  of  the  Venus  of  Melos,  which  he  introduced 
to  visitors  as  Mrs.  Bodie,  in  token  of  the  mystic  fact 
that  he  was  wedded  to  his  art.  The  fun  of  sweeping 
out  his  place  was  this, — that  all  around  the  room  were 
tacked  up  pictures  that  had  been  made,  in  playful 
moments,  by  other  artists  [Mr.  Bodie  would  have  called 
them  his  confreres], — Leonardo,  and  Gainsborough, 
and  Reynolds,  and  the  tender-hearted  Greuze.  Also,  in 
odd  moments,  the  little  slavey  could  fish  forth  a  tape- 
measure  from  a  pocket  in  her  skirt  and  compare  the 
compass  of  her  own  waist  with  that  of  Mrs.  Bodie's; 
and,  if  the  dimensions  seemed  discouragingly  different, 
she  could  always  remember  her  own  feet, — the  little  feet 


A  KISS  FOR  CINDERELLA  131 

that  God  had  kissed.  Mrs.  Bodie  had  no  feet,  to  brag 
about. 

It  must  have  been  because  of  her  feet  that  Mr.  Bodie 
first  called  her  Cinderella  and  told  her  a  very  ancient 
story,  of  which  she  seemed  to  be  predestined  as  the 
heroine.  The  little  slavey  listened,  and  believed;  be- 
cause a  story  that  is  told  [by  any  man  who  is  wedded 
to  his  art]  is  much  more  real  than  that  other,  rather 
tedious,  story  which  is  drifted  to  us,  day  by  day,  on  the 
casual  tide  of  actual  experience.  Art  is  more  than 
life;  for  life  is  short,  but  art  is  long.  It  was  to  prove 
this  to  all  unbelievers  that  story-telling  was  invented, 
long  ago,  before  the  world  grew  old. 

Mr.  Bodie  never  knew  where  the  little  slavey  lived. 
She  had  told  him  merely  that  the  words,  "  Celeste  et 
Cie.,"  were  printed  in  large  letters  on  her  door.  One 
day  he  happened  to  look  up  this  legend.  It  belonged 
to  a  famous  shop  in  Bond  Street.  Was  Miss  Thing,  in 
the  leisure  moments  of  the  night,  a  glorified  dressmaker 
to  the  upper  classes?  He  did  not  know.  What  were 
the  upper  classes  to  a  man  who  was  married  to  Mrs. 
Bodie?  All  he  actually  knew  about  the  little  slavey 
was  that  she  had  a  passion  for  collecting  boards. 

It  was  this  passion  that  caused  Miss  Thing  to  be 
observed  by  an  astute  policeman.  Collecting  anything, 
in  war  time,  is  suspicious ;  and  boards — what  did  she 
do  with  the  boards?  Clearly,  she  must  be  a  German 

spy- 

And  that  is  why  the  policeman,  one  night,  trailed  the 
little  slavey  to  a  tiny  hovel  in  a  dark  street,  far  away 
from  the  center  of  things,  and  found  the  words,  "  Celeste 


132     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

et  Cie.,"  painted  on  the  door.  He  donned  a  false  beard, 
of  fearsome  and  wonderful  dimensions  [for  this  police- 
man was  a  master  of  disguise],  and  entered  the  sorry 
hovel  where  the  little  slavey  lived.  He  found  her  plying 
an  active  business,  as  tailor,  as  laundress,  as  lady- 
barber,  and  ever  so  many  other  things ;  for  "  Celeste  " 
was  nothing  but  a  nom  de  guerre  for  a  useful  little 
woman,  with  a  face  of  no  account,  who  wanted  to  be 
serviceable  and  would  do  anything  for  anybody  for  a 
penny. 

She  did  not  want  the  pennies  for  herself.  She  needed 
them  for  something  else.  And  that  brings  us  to  the 
mystery  of  the  collected  boards.  All  round  the  walls 
of  the  little  place  of  business  of  "  Celeste  et  Cie."  were 
hung  great  boxes  made  of  boards.  What  did  they  con- 
tain? The  astute  policeman  desired  very  much  to  know, 
for  the  sake  of  the  safety  of  the  Empire.  Forthwith, 
there  popped  up  from  each  box  a  tiny  curly  head.  These 
little  girls,  hung  up  in  boxes  on  the  wall,  were  orphans 
of  the  war.  There  was  Gladys,  whose  father  was  serv- 
ing in  the  British  fleet,  and  Marie  Therese,  whose  father 
had  been  killed  in  France,  and  Delphine,  whose  father 
had  been  massacred  in  Belgium ;  and  there  was  yet  an- 
other. "  What  is  she?,"  inquired  the  astute  policeman; 
and  the  foster-mother  answered,  "  Swiss."  But,  when 
the  policeman  stuck  his  hand  into  the  box,  his  hand  was 
bitten.  "  Swiss,  did  you  say?,"  inquired  the  policeman, 
for  indeed  he  was  very  astute.  "  She  was  one  of  those 
left  over,"  said  Miss  Thing,  "  and  I  had  to  take  her 
in."  This  fourth  child  was,  in  very  truth,  only  one  of 
those  left  over.  Her  name  was  Gretchen.  She  had  a 


A  KISS  FOR  CINDERELLA  133 

habit  of  popping  up  her  head  and  asking  that  God 
strafe  this  or  that.  But  that  was  only  her  way.  She 
couldn't  help  the  blood  that  coursed  throughout  her 
tiny  veins, — now,  could  she?  Her  foster-mother  was 
one  of  those  who  understood. 

The  exceedingly  astute  policeman  went  away;  for 
the  mysterious  collector  of  boards  was  evidently  not  a 
spy.  And  then  the  miracle  began.  If  it  were  not  for 
the  miracle,  this  narrative  would  not  amount  to  much; 
but  there  is  always  a  miracle  in  every  life,  however 
humble,  and  that  is  the  reason  why  stories  are  told. 
For  a  story  is  nothing  more  nor  less  than  the  testimony 
of  a  Tall  Person  who  has  seen  a  miracle  to  the  shorter 
people  who  have  seen  it  not. 

Miss  Thing  had  said  so  often  to  Gladys  and  Marie 
Therese  and  Delphine  and  Gretchen  that  she  herself  was 
Cinderella  that  she  had  to  promise  them  at  last  that  the 
greatest  of  all  balls  would  take  place  on  a  certain  eve- 
ning. The  children  expected  it ;  and  when  children  ex- 
pect a  miracle  ...  oh  well,  you  know.  So,  after  the 
astute  policeman  had  gone  away,  Miss  Thing  went  out 
into  the  street,  and  sat  upon  a  little  stone  beside  the 
door  inscribed  "  Celeste  et  Cie.,"  and  waited  for  the 
Fairy  Godmother  to  come.  She  waited  a  long  time; 
and  then  the  miracle  occurred,  for  the  Fairy  Godmother 
suddenly  appeared  to  her. 

What  actually  happened — if  you  care  to  know — was 
merely  this : — the  little  slavey  sat  upon  the  stone  until 
she  was  frozen  and  enfevered,  and  the  policeman  found 
her  in  the  gutter  and  picked  her  up,  and  took  her  to  a 
public  hospital,  where  she  lay  in  a  delirium  for  days; 


134     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

and  the  policeman  came  to  see  her,  and  then,  when  she 
was  getting  well  .  .  . 

But  all  that  really  happened  was  what  went  on  in  a 
little  chamber  of  Miss  Thing's  imagination,  while  her 
frozen  and  enfevered  body  was  lying  in  the  gutter. 
Nothing,  in  anybody's  life,  is  real  but  what  has  been 
imagined.  We  are  not  what  we  actually  are,  but  what 
we  dream  ourselves  to  be.  "  Men  who  look  upon  my 
outside,"  said  Sir  Thomas  Browne,  "  perusing  only  my 
condition  and  fortunes,  do  err  in  my  altitude  " ;  and 
"  he  that  understands  not  thus  much  hath  not  his  intro- 
duction or  first  lesson,  and  is  yet  to  begin  the  alphabet 
of  man." 

So  the  Fairy  Godmother  really  appeared,  and  the 
famous  ball  took  place,  even  as  Miss  Thing  had  prom- 
ised to  the  children  that  it  would.  It  was  indeed  a 
gorgeous  ball;  and  the  four  little  children,  in  their 
nighties,  looked  down  upon  it  from  a  box  [only,  now, 
it  should  be  printed  Box]  above  the  royal  throne. 
First  there  came  the  King  and  Queen;  and  the  King 
looked  like  a  common  laborer  who  used  to  collect  boards 
for  the  little  slavey,  and  the  Queen  looked  like  Mrs. 
Maloney  (a  patron  of  "  Celeste  et  Cie."),  and  they  both 
talked  an  'orrid  cockney,  but  they  sat  in  patent  rock- 
ing-chairs and  resembled  certain  drawings  in  a  book 
about  a  little  girl  called  Alice.  Then  came  a  black 
person  with  a  mighty  axe,  who  was  deferentially  referred 
to  as  The  Censor,  and  the  Lord  Mayor  of  London,  and 
a  mysterious  and  very  influential  person  called  Lord 
Times.  And  then  there  came  the  Prince  himself,  who 
was  very  handsome  and  exceedingly  astute  and  easily 


A  KISS  FOR  CINDERELLA  135 

inclined  to  boredom ;  and  his  features  were  those  of  the 
policeman,  and  he  spoke  as  one  having  authority. 

The  time  arrived  to  choose  a  consort  for  the  Prince ; 
and  many  famous  beauties  were  brought  in,  to  be  in- 
spected by  him.  For  this  supreme  occasion,  the  walls 
of  Mr.  Bodie's  diggings  were  denuded.  In  they 
marched, — the  Mona  Lisa,  and  the  Duchess  of  Devon- 
shire, and  the  Lady  with  the  Muff,  and  the  Girl  with  the 
Broken  Pitcher,  and  a  Spanish  dancer  by  the  name  of 
Carmencita.  The  Prince  looked  them  over,  and  was 
bored.  It  is  a  princely  habit  to  be  bored.  But  then 
the  pearly  curtains  parted,  and  down  a  wonderful  great 
stairway  Cinderella  came.  Her  face  was  not  so  much 
to  look  upon,  for  it  was  only  the  face  of  Miss  Thing,  a 
slavey  in  a  London  lodging-house,  and  nobody  had  ever 
praised  her  face;  but  then  there  were  her  feet, — the 
little  feet  that  God  had  kissed,  that  day  when  He  was 
busy  and  had  hurried  on. 

It  was  her  feet  that  caught  the  eye  of  the  Prince  and 
rescued  him  from  boredom ;  for  his  face  was  that  of  the 
policeman,  and  the  policeman  was  exceedingly  astute. 
One  little  fleeting  look  at  her  fabled  and  incomparable 
feet,  and  she  was  chosen ;  and  then  the  fun  began.  A 
street-organ,  mysteriously  near  though  far  away,  be- 
gan to  play  the  old,  old  songs  that  are  heard  along  the 
Old  Kent  Road,  which  lies  [as  many  people  say]  on  the 
wrong  side  of  the  river ;  and  the  children  clapped  their 
hands ;  and  the  whole  court  broke  into  a  dance.  Then 
somebody  rolled  in  a  push-cart,  painted  gold ;  and 
everybody  snatched  an  ice-cream  cone  without  being 
asked  to  pay  a  penny ;  and  everything  happened  as  it 


136     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

really  ought  to  happen,  until  a  Bishop  appeared,  look- 
ing marvelously  like  a  stuffed  bird  on  Mr.  Bodie's 
mantelpiece,  and  married  Cinderella  to  the  Prince,  and 
then  ...  a  great  bell  boomed  forth,  tolling  twelve. 

And  that  was  the  end  of  Cinderella's  dream, — which 
was  not  all  a  dream,  for  what  we  really  know  is  only 
what  we  have  imagined.  That  is  the  message  of  this 
play ;  and  if  you  do  not  understand  it,  by  all  means 
stay  away  and  make  room  for  the  rest  of  us. 

Several  weeks  elapse ;  and  then  we  see  the  little  slavey 
sitting  up  in  bed  in  a  hospital  for  convalescents.  The 
policeman  comes  to  call  upon  her  every  day.  He  thinks 
that  he  is  only  a  policeman ;  but  she  knows — she  really 
knows — that  he  is  a  Fairy  Prince.  She  has  made  up 
her  mind  that  he  will  make  up  his  mind  to  ask  her  to 
marry  him ;  and  she  wishes  both  to  hinder  him  and  help 
him  in  his  laborious  proposal.  But,  when  at  last  he 
starts  in  to  propose,  she  cuts  him  short.  She  would 
like  to  look  back  upon  the  luxury  of  having  refused  him 
before  finally  accepting  him ;  and  she  makes  him  prom- 
ise to  ask  her  a  second  time  if  she  should  happen  to 
refuse  him  now.  He  asks;  and-she  refuses, — with  that 
little  hint  of  sniffiness  for  which  a  woman's  nose  was 
made.  There  is  a  pause.  Then  suddenly,  from  under- 
neath the  sheets,  a  tiny  hand  is  shot  out  to  grasp  a 
hand  more  mighty  than  her  own.  "  Ask  me  again," 
she  says.  .  .  . 

And  then  we  become  aware  of  The  Romantical  Mind 
of  a  Policeman.  She  has  thought  of  an  engagement 
ring;  but  he  has  thought  of  something  else,  less  usual 
and  more  romantical.  He  produces,  from  a  mass  of 


A  KISS  FOR  CINDERELLA  137 

wrapping-paper,  two  little  things  of  glass ;  and  he  fits 
them  on  her  feet,  and  lo !  they  are  slippers,  and  that  is 
why  her  name  is  Cinderella  for  all  time.  "  It  is  a 
kiss,"  remarks  the  romantical  policeman  [who  is,  in 
truth,  a  Fairy  Prince].  And  that  is  why  the  play  is 
called  A  Kiss  for  Cinderella.  Now,  this  story,  when 
recorded  by  a  pen  that  has  no  magic  in  it,  may  sound 
as  if  it  were  a  little  mad ;  but,  in  reality  it  is  not  mad  at 
all,  but  very,  very  real.  Such  things  as  this  do  happen 
every  day,  within  the  minds  of  the  poor  and  the  rejected 
of  this  world ;  and  that  is  why  the  poor  are  not  so  poor, 
nor  the  rejected  so  despised,  as  we  may  think  them ;  and 
that  is,  perhaps,  the  meaning  of  the  saying  that  "  the 
last  shall  be  first," — because  they  really  are. 

Whenever  a  million  lilies-of-the-valley  are  shaken  to 
a  silver  singing,  there  is  nothing  left  to  say  for  the  un- 
silvered  voice  of  criticism.  .  .  .  "  If  you  have  tears, 
prepare  to  shed  them  now."  ..."  And  if  thou  dost 
not  weep  at  this,  at  what  art  thou  wont  to  weep?" 
.  "  The  rest  is  silence."  . 


XVIII 

DRAMATIC  TALENT  AND  THEATRICAL 
TALENT 


SIR  ARTHUR  PINERO,  in  his  lecture  on  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson:  the  Dramatist,  has  drawn  an  interesting 
distinction  between  dramatic  talent  and  theatrical  tal- 
ent. "  What  is  dramatic  talent?,"  he  inquires.  "  Is  it 
not  the  power  to  project  characters,  and  to  cause  them 
to  tell  an  interesting  story  through  the  medium  of  dia- 
logue? This  is  dramatic  talent ;  and  dramatic  talent,  if 
I  may  so  express  it,  is  the  raw  material  of  theatrical 
talent.  Dramatic,  like  poetic,  talent  is  born,  not  made ; 
if  it  is  to  achieve  success  on  the  stage  it  must  be  devel- 
oped into  theatrical  talent  by  hard  study,  and  gener- 
ally by  long  practice.  For  theatrical  talent  consists 
in  the  power  of  making  your  characters,  not  only  tell 
a  story  by  means  of  dialogue,  but  tell  it  in  such 
skilfully-devised  form  and  order  as  shall,  within  the 
limits  of  an  ordinary  theatrical  representation,  give 
rise  to  the  greatest  possible  amount  of  that  peculiar 
kind  of  emotional  effect,  the  production  of  which  is  the 
one  great  function  of  the  theatre." 

It  is  evidently  the  opinion  of  Pinero  that  dramatic 
talent  is  of  little  service  in  the  theatre  until  it  has  been 

138 


DRAMATIC  AND  THEATRICAL  TALENT     139 

transmuted  into  theatrical  talent;  and,  indeed,  the 
history  of  the  drama  records  the  wreck  of  many  noble 
reputations  on  the  solid  basis  of  this  principle.  There 
is,  of  course,  the  case  of  Stevenson  himself.  Concern- 
ing this,  Pinero  says,  "  No  one  can  doubt  that  he  had 
in  him  the  ingredients  of  a  dramatist,"  and  again, 
"  Dramatic  talent  Stevenson  undoubtedly  possessed  in 
abundance  " ;  but  then  he  adds  significantly,  "  And  I 
am  convinced  that  theatrical  talent  was  well  within  his 
reach,  if  only  he  had  put  himself  to  the  pains  of  evolv- 
ing it."  But  a  greater  instance  is  the  case  of  Robert 
Browning.  Browning  was  not  merely,  like  so  many  of 
his  eminent  contemporaries,  a  reminiscent  author  writ- 
ing beautiful  anachronisms  in  imitation  of  the  great 
Elizabethan  dramatists.  He  was  born  with  a  really 
great  dramatic  talent, — one  of  the  very  greatest  in  the 
history  of  English  literature.  But  theatrical  talent 
remained  beyond  his  reach.  He  tried  to  write  plays 
for  Macready,  but  these  plays  were  ineffective  on  the 
stage ;  and,  after  many  futile  efforts,  he  retreated  from 
the  theatre  to  the  library. 

Many  men  whose  native  endowment  of  dramatic 
talent  was  less  remarkable  than  Browning's  have  suc- 
ceeded in  the  theatre  by  the  developed  efficiency  of  sheer 
theatrical  talent.  There  is,  of  course,  the  case  of 
Scribe,  who  was — at  least,  from  the  commercial  point 
of  view — the  most  successful  dramatist  who  ever  lived. 
Scribe  knew  little,  and  cared  less,  about  life;  but  he 
knew  much,  and  cared  more,  about  the  theatre :  and,  in 
the  matter  of  making  an  effective  play,  he  could  give 
both  cards  and  spades  to  Browning. 


140      PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  a  few  instances — a  very 
few — of  men  who  have  succeeded  in  the  theatre  by  the 
sheer  power  of  innate  dramatic  talent,  without  the 
assistance  of  hard  study  and  long  practice  of  the  traffic 
of  the  stage.  There  is,  of  course,  the  case  of  Gerhart 
Hauptmann.  When  Hauptmann  wrote  The  Weavers, 
at  the  age  of  thirty,  he  had  not  yet  progressed  beyond 
the  mere  possession  of  the  raw  material  of  theatrical 
talent.  This  composition — the  fourth  in  the  chrono- 
logical record  of  his  works — was  by  no  means  skilfully- 
devised  in  form  and  order ;  but  it  is  now  acknowledged 
as  his  masterpiece,  because  of  the  overwhelming  power 
of  the  artless  and  unimproved  dramatic  talent  which  it 
easily  revealed. 

It  is,  perhaps,  a  greater  thing  for  an  architect  to 
dream  a  noble  building  than  it  is  for  a  contractor  to 
erect  it.  Pinero  contends  that  it  is  only  the  finished 
edifice  that  counts,  and  that  the  architect  is  as  im- 
potent without  the  contractor  as  the  contractor  is 
impotent  without  the  architect.  Dramatic  talent — 
which  is  born,  not  made — may  be  a  greater  thing  than 
theatrical  talent — which  is  made,  not  born.  Pinero  as- 
serts that  a  great  dramatist  must  be  equipped  with 
both.  The  great  dramatist  must  have,  like  Haupt- 
mann, "  the  power  to  project  characters  and  to  cause 
them  to  tell  an  interesting  story  through  the  medium 
of  dialogue " ;  but  he  must  also  have,  according  to 
Pinero,  the  practiced  power  to  "  give  rise  to  the  great- 
est possible  amount  of  that  peculiar  kind  of  emotional 
effect,  the  production  of  which  is  the  one  great  func- 
tion of  the  theatre."  The  best  illustration,  in  the 


DRAMATIC  AND  THEATRICAL  TALENT     141 

present  period,  of  the  second  half  of  this  requirement 
is,  of  course,  afforded  by  the  finest  plays  of  Pinero 
himself.  Endowed  with  a  dramatic  talent  of  a  high 
order,  he  has  evolved  a  theatrical  talent  which — in  the 
opinion  of  the  present  writer — is  unsurpassed  and, 
thus  far,  insurpassable. 

Looking  at  them  in  the  light  of  this  distinction,  it  is 
still  a  little  difficult  to  place  the  plays  of  Mr.  John 
Galsworthy.  .There  can  be  no  doubt  whatever  that  he 
possesses  dramatic  talent  in  abundance.  He  is  cer- 
tainly a  great  writer  and  probably  a  great  man ;  and, 
in  turning  his  attention  to  the  drama,  he  is  not  merely — 
like  Robert  Louis  Stevenson — a  man  of  letters  toying 
with  the  theatre.  He  sees  many  things  in  life  that  are 
dramatic — profoundly  and  tremendously  dramatic — 
and  these  things  he  strives  to  render  in  the  technical 
terms  that  are  current  in  the  theatre  of  to-day.  For 
this  task  he  is  endowed  with  many  gifts.  For  instance, 
he  has  a  careful  sense  of  form,  both  in  respect  to  struc- 
ture and  in  respect  to  style;  he  has  a  keen  sense  of 
characterization ;  and,  best  of  all,  he  comes  into  the 
theatre,  as  many  less  considerable  men  come  into 
a  cathedral, — to  watch  and — in  a  lofty  sense — to 
pray. 

Mr.  Galsworthy,  then,  is  not  merely  a  man  of  letters 
playing  a  new  game,  of  which  he  does  not  know,  and 
scorns  to  learn,  the  rules.  But  two  questions  yet  re- 
main to  be  decided: — first,  whether  he  has  yet  evolved 
a  theatrical  talent  which  is  worthily  concomitant  with 
his  innate  dramatic  talent,  and,  second,  whether  he 
will  ever  do  so.  The  second  question,  of  course,  would 


be  superfluous  unless  the  first  were  answered  in  the 
negative.  But  has  Mr.  Galsworthy  succeeded,  thus  far, 
in  producing  "  the  greatest  possible  amount  of  that 
peculiar  kind  of  emotional  effect,  the  production  of 
which  is  the  one  great  function  of  the  theatre  "?  This 
is  a  question  which  is  certain  to  call  forth  a  divided 
vote.  The  present  writer — e  pluribus  unum — must  still 
be  numbered  on  the  negative  side. 

No  play  of  Mr.  Galsworthy's  has  ever,  until  very 
recently,  made  money  in  the  theatre.  This  considera- 
tion might  seem  merely  sordid,  were  it  not  for  the  fact 
that  the  drama  is  a  democratic  art  and  that  it  is  unde- 
niably the  duty  of  the  dramatist  to  appeal  to  the  many, 
not  the  few.  On  the  other  hand,  Mr.  Galsworthy  has 
never  written  a  play  which  was  unworthy  of  serious 
attention.  His  best  plays  are  not  so  good  as  The 
Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray;  but  his  worst  plays  are  not 
so  bad  as  A  Wife  Without  a  Smile.  Always,  in 
dramatic  compositions,  Mr.  Galsworthy  has  had  some- 
thing to  say ;  always,  he  has  created  living  characters ; 
always,  he  has  told  an  interesting  story  through  the 
medium  of  very  interesting  dialogue. 

Why,  then,  has  he  failed  to  capture  the  great  army 
of  the  theatre-going  public?  It  is  because  he  is  not 
innately  interested  in  the  stage.  Mr.  Galsworthy  is  a 
great  man  of  letters ;  he  is  probably  a  great  man ;  but 
he  is  not — thus  far,  at  least — a  great  man  of  the  thea- 
tre. Some  of  his  plays  are  very  effective, — for  instance, 
The  Silver  Box,  Strife,  Justice,  and  The  Pigeon.  Some 
of  them  are  ineffective, — for  instance,  Joy,  The  Eldest 
Son,  and  The  Mob.  Others,  like  The  Fugitive,  hover 


DRAMATIC  AND  THEATRICAL  TALENT     143 

tantalizingly  between  the  two  extremes.  Yet  all  these 
plays,  in  workmanship,  are  equally  painstaking.  An 
ineffective  play,  like  Joy,  is  just  as  well  written,  and 
nearly  as  well  constructed,  as  an  effective  play,  like 
The  Silver  Box.  The  difference,  then,  is  not  a  differ- 
ence in  craftsmanship,  but  merely  a  difference  in  sub- 
ject-matter. Pinero,  the  master-craftsman,  can  make 
a  great  play  out  of  next  to  nothing,  as  he  did  in  the 
instance  of  The  Thunderbolt;  but  Galsworthy  can  make 
a  great  play  only  when  he  has  happened — as  in  the  case 
of  Justice — to  hit  upon  a  subject  that  is  so  inherently 
dramatic  that  it  will  carry  itself  without  the  aid  of 
any  notable  exercise  of  theatrical  talent. 

No  one  can  deny  that  the  best  plays  of  Mr.  Gals- 
worthy are  very  good  indeed ;  but  the  fact  remains  that, 
fine  artist  as  he  is,  he  cares  much  more  about  life  than 
he  cares  about  the  theatre.  This  is  the  very  thing  that, 
in  the  vision  of  the  leading  literary  critics,  is  said  in 
praise  of  him ;  but,  in  the  vision  of  the  present  writer,  it 
is  said  a  little — though  only  a  little — in  dispraise.  Mr. 
Galsworthy  seems  never  to  have  smelt  the  footlights. 
He  has  never  been  an  actor,  like  Shakespeare  and 
Moliere ;  he  has  never  been  a  stage-director,  like  Ibsen ; 
he  seems  never  to  have  "  counted  the  house,"  like  Lope 
de  Vega  and  the  two  great  dramatists  who  bore  succes- 
sively the  name  of  Alexandre  Dumas.  To  actors,  to 
stage-directors,  to  managers  who  "  count  the  house," 
and  to  dramatic  critics,  Mr.  Galsworthy  still  appears 
as  a  lofty  man  of  letters  who  has  not  yet  utterly  be- 
come a  fellow-laborer  in  the  greatest  of  all  the  demo- 
cratic institutions  of  the  world. 


144     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

Nobody  denies  the  innate  dramatic  talent  of  Mr. 
Galsworthy.  Some  few — including  the  present  com- 
mentator— still  deny  that  he  has  yet  developed  a  the- 
atrical talent  that  is  worthy  of  his  native  gift.  Two 
or  three  reasons  for  this  failing — if  it  be  a  failing — are 
evident,  and  even  obvious.  In  the  first  place,  Mr. 
Galsworthy  considers  life  as  God  would  look  at  it, 
instead  of  considering  life  as  the  average  man  would 
look  at  it.  In  this  respect,  he  fulfils  the  natural  func- 
tion of  the  novelist — to  tell  the  individual  what  the 
public  does  not  know — instead  of  fulfiling  the  natural 
function  of  the  dramatist — to  remind  the  public  of  what 
the  public  has  unfalteringly  known  but  seemed  to  have 
forgotten.  Mr.  Galsworthy  never  appears  to  sit  with 
his  spectators  in  the  theatre.  He  does  not  really  under- 
stand and  love  his  audience.  Otherwise,  he  would  feel 
himself  impelled  to  renounce  the  Olympian  impartiality 
displayed  in  such  a  work  as  Strife,  and  would  descend 
to  the  arena,  to  fight  and  bleed  for  the  humanly  and 
naturally  partisan.  But  Mr.  Galsworthy  disdains  to 
care  about  his  public ;  and,  only  in  a  slightly  less  de- 
gree, he  disdains  to  care  about  his  actors.  He  asks 
them,  every  now  and  then,  to  refrain  from  doing  things 
which  would  be  exceedingly  effective  on  the  stage ;  and 
his  only  reason  is  that  such  things  are  seldom  actually 
done  in  life  itself.  In  other  words,  he  rebels  against 
an  evolvement  of  theatrical  talent  from  a  native  and 
indubitable  dramatic  talent.  He  seems,  not  infre- 
quently, to  smile  a  god-like  smile  and  say,  "  This  pas- 
sage may  not  be  theatrical ;  but,  after  all,  it  is  dra- 
matic. Life  is  bigger  than  the  theatre;  and,  as  the 


DRAMATIC  AND  THEATRICAL  TALENT     145 

greatest  of  all  novelists  remarked,  *  Life,  some  think,  is 
worthy  of  the  Muse.'  " 

It  is  quite  evident  that  Mr.  Galsworthy  disagrees 
with  the  opinion  of  Pinero  that  "  the  one  great  function 
of  the  theatre  "  is  "  to  produce  the  greatest  possible 
amount  of  a  certain  peculiar  kind  of  emotional  effect." 
Given  the  subject-matter  of  Justice,  for  example,  a 
theatrical  craftsman  like  Pinero  could  easily  increase 
the  amount  of  this  emotional  effect  that  is  produced. 
When  Mr.  Galsworthy  wrote  this  play,  he  was  inter- 
ested solely  in  his  subject-matter  and  not  at  all  in  the 
technique  of  the  theatre.  The  subject  is  inherently 
dramatic,  and  that  is  why  the  play  is  powerful ;  but  the 
treatment  of  the  subject  is  deliberately  untheatrical. 

Consider,  for  example,  the  unprecedented  circum- 
stance that  the  entire  story  of  the  play  is  told  in  the 
first  act  and  the  fourth,  and  that  the  narrative  would 
still  remain  complete  if  the  second  and  third  acts  were 
utterly  omitted.  In  the  first  act  we  are  shown  all  the 
motives  and  told  all  the  circumstances  of  Falder's 
crime ;  he  confesses  his  guilt ;  and,  when  he  is  arrested, 
his  conviction  is  a  foregone  conclusion.  The  detailed 
report  of  his  trial  which  is  set  before  us  in  the  second 
act  is,  in  consequence,  not  technically  necessary.  Noth- 
ing whatsoever  is  told  us  in  this  trial  which  we  did 
not  know  before ;  and  the  act  is  therefore  empty  of  sur- 
prise. Furthermore,  since  the  conviction  of  Falder  has 
been  certain  from  the  first,  the  act  is  also  empty  of 
suspense. 

When  a  self-confessed  criminal  has  been  convicted, 
he  is  naturally  sent  to  jail;  and  consequently — from 


146     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

the  point  of  view  of  craftsmanship  alone — Mr.  Gals- 
worthy's third  act  adds  nothing  to  the  story.  The 
narrative  does  not  begin  to  move  again  until  the  fourth 
act,  when  Falder,  having  served  his  sentence,  comes 
back  to  make  his  futile  and  pitiful  attempt  to  begin 
life  over  again.  For  two  entire  acts — the  second  and 
the  third — there  has  been  no  forward  movement  of  the 
narrative.  Here  we  have  a  pattern  which  Pinero  would 
unquestionably  have  dismissed  as  offering  an  invitation 
to  disaster;  yet,  curiously  enough,  these  two  acts,  as 
Mr.  Galsworthy  has  written  them,  are  the  most  inter- 
esting of  the  four  acts  of  the  play. 

The  reason  is  that  what  we  care  about  in  Justice  is 
not  the  story  but  the  theme.  The  purpose  of  the 
author  is  not  so  much  to  interest  us  in  what  is  done  by 
Falder,  nor  even  in  what  is  done  to  Falder,  as  to  interest 
us  in  a  certain  social  fact.  His  sole  desire  is  to  force 
us  to  observe,  with  due  consideration,  the  way  in  which 
that  great  machine  without  a  soul,  called  Justice,  habit- 
ually does  its  work.  He  makes  us  attend  the  trial 
because  he  wants  to  show  us  what  an  ordinary  trial  is 
like;  and  he  makes  us  go  to  jail  with  Falder  because  he 
wants  to  show  us  what  an  ordinary  jail  is  like. 

As  a  further  instance  of  Mr.  Galsworthy's  deliberate 
avoidance  of  "  the  greatest  possible  amount  of  emo- 
tional effect,"  consider  the  omission  from  his  last  act 
of  what  a  craftsman  like  Pinero  would  certainly  have 
seized  upon  as  a  scene  a  faire.  Early  in  this  act,  before 
Falder  reappears,  we  are  told  that  the  woman  whom  he 
loves,  and  for  whom  he  stole  the  money,  has  been  driven, 
by  the  economic  necessity  of  supporting  her  children,  to 


DRAMATIC  AND  THEATRICAL  TALENT     147 

sell  herself  to  her  employer  during  the  period  of  Fal- 
der's  incarceration.  As  soon  as  we  receive  this  informa- 
tion, we  foresee  a  big  scene  between  Ruth  and  Falder 
when  Falder  shall  find  out  the  tragic  fact  which  we 
already  know.  Not  only  do  we  expect  this  scene,  but  we 
desire  ardently  to  see  it.  Yet,  when  the  moment  comes 
in  which  the  hero  receives  this  revelation,  Mr.  Gals- 
worthy at  once  removes  both  Ruth  and  Falder  from 
the  stage  and  shuts  them  up  together  in  an  adjoining 
room;  and  the  big  scene  which  we  wished  to  see  takes 
place  on  the  other  side  of  a  closed  door,  while  matters 
much  less  interesting  are  discussed  before  us  on  the 
stage.  It  is  evident  that  Mr.  Galsworthy  deliberately 
made  this  choice,  in  order  that  we  might  remain  more 
attentive  to  his  theme  than  to  the  personal  reactions  of 
his  hero  and  his  heroine. 

It  has  been  said  above  that  Mr.  Galsworthy  disdains 
to  care  about  his  actors ;  and  this  point  may  be  illus- 
trated from  the  text  of  Justice.  Consider  Cokeson,  for 
example,  as  an  acting  part.  This  character  is  natu- 
rally quaint  and  humorous ;  and  he  says  many  funny 
things,  although  he  does  not  realize  that  they  are  funny. 
It  is  evident  that  the  actor  entrusted  with  this  part 
could  easily  call  forth  many  big  laughs  from  the  audi- 
ence if  he  should  play  for  comedy;  yet  all  these  big 
laughs  would  be  what  Mr.  George  M.  Cohan  calls  "  the 
wrong  kind  of  laughs."  They  would  disrupt  the  mood 
of  the  scene,  and  would  distract  attention  from  Falder 
or  from  Ruth.  Hence,  for  the  sake  of  the  general 
effect,  the  actor  playing  Cokeson  is  required  to  sup- 
press and  kill  the  laughs  which  might  easily  be  awakened 


14-8     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

by  his  lines.  He  is  given  funny  things  to  say  and  is 
obliged  to  say  them  as  if  they  were  not  funny.  In 
consequence,  this  character,  although  extremely  life- 
like, is  extremely  difficult  to  play.  No  such  task,  for 
instance,  is  imposed  upon  the  actor  by  Pinero  when  he 
projects  a  humorous  character,  like  Cayley  Drummle, 
in  the  very  midst  of  a  tragic  complication. 

The  few  points  which  have  already  been  adduced  are 
sufficient  to  indicate  that  Justice  can  by  no  means  be 
accepted  as  a  consummate  example  of  theatrical  talent ; 
but  it  should  always  be  remembered  that  theatrical 
efficiency  is  the  one  thing  that  Mr.  Galsworthy  has 
made  up  his  mind  to  get  along  without.  It  must  be 
admitted,  also,  that  he  gets  along  without  it  most  sur- 
prisingly. So  great  is  his  dramatic  talent  that  he 
seems  to  achieve  more  by  leaving  life  alone  than  he 
could  possibly  achieve  by  arranging  life  in  accordance 
with  a  technical  pattern,  however  dexterous  theat- 
rically. 

It  would  have  been  easy,  for  example,  to  make  the 
trial-scene  in  Justice  more  theatrical,  by  any  of  a  multi- 
tude of  means.  For  instance,  Falder  might  have  been 
innocent,  and  might  have  been  convicted  falsely  by  the 
piling  up  of  apparently  incriminating  evidence.  Or,  if 
guilty,  still  the  motive  of  his  crime  might  easily  have 
been  made  more  sympathetic.  He  might,  for  instance, 
have  stolen  the  money  to  save  a  dying  mother  from 
starvation,  instead  of  to  elope  with  a  married  woman. 
Or  he  might  have  been  persecuted  by  his  employer,  or 
treated  unfairly  by  the  prosecuting  attorney,  or  judged 
unjustly  by  the  judge.  One,  at  least,  of  these  obvious 


DRAMATIC  AND  THEATRICAL  TALENT     149 

aids  to  the  production  of  "  the  greatest  possible  amount 
of  emotional  effect  "  would  have  been  snatched  at  by 
almost  any  other  playwright.  Any  other  playwright, 
also,  would  have  increased  the  suspense  and  the  sur- 
prise of  the  trial-scene  by  cleverly  deleting  from  the 
antecedent  act  the  complete  exposure  of  the  case 
against  the  hero. 

Again,  in  the  third  act,  any  other  playwright  would 
have  augmented  the  "  emotional  effect "  by  making  the 
warden  a  tyrant  instead  of  a  man  who  is  obviously 
trying  to  be  kind.  The  very  purpose  of  the  play  is  to 
attack  the  prison-system ;  yet  Mr.  Galsworthy  is,  if 
anything,  more  fair  to  the  warden  and  the  prison 
doctor  than  he  is  to  Falder  and  the  other  convicts. 

The  author's  theory,  of  course,  is  that  life  itself  is 
so  dramatic  that  it  needs  no  artificial  heightening  to 
make  it  interesting  in  the  theatre.  Whether  or  not  this 
theory  shall  work  in  practice  depends,  as  has  been  said 
above,  upon  the  subject-matter  of  the  play.  In  The 
Eldest  Son,  for  instance,  the  omission  of  the  scene  a 
faire  from  the  last  act  sent  the  play  to  failure  at  a  time 
when  Stanley  Houghton's  discussion  of  the  same  theme 
in  Hindle  Wakes  was  carried  to  a  great  success  by  a 
thorough  development  of  the  very  passage  which  Mr. 
Galsworthy  had  chosen  to  evade. 

But  Justice,  in  which  the  subject-matter  is  inherently 
dramatic,  is  undeniably  a  great  play, — despite  the  fact, 
or  possibly  because  of  the  fact,  that  the  treatment  of 
the  subject  is  deliberately  untheatrical.  The  piece 
appeals  profoundly  to  the  sentiment  of  social  pity ;  and, 
since  it  is  absolutely  true  and  overwhelmingly  sincere, 


150     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

it  seems  all  the  more  dramatic  because  it  is  meticulously 
untheatrical. 


n 

In  the  epilogue  to  Fanny's  First  Play,  the  popu- 
lar dramatic  critic,  Mr.  Flawner  Bannal  [whose  name 
shows  a  significant  resemblance  to  the  French  phrase, 
flaneur  banal^  is  asked  for  his  opinion  of  the  piece  that 
he  has  witnessed ;  and  he  dodges  this  direct  question  in 
the  following  bit  of  dialogue: — 

THE  COUNT.     What  is  your  opinion  of  the  play? 

BANNAL.     Well,  who's  it  by? 

THE  COUNT.     That  is  a  secret  for  the  present. 

BANNAL.  You  don't  expect  me  to  know  what  to  say 
about  a  play  when  I  don't  know  who  the  author  is,  do  you  ? 

THE  COUNT.     Why  not? 

BANNAL.  Why  not!  Why  not!  Suppose  you  had  to 
write  about  a  play  by  Pinero  and  one  by  Jones !  Would  you 
say  exactly  the  same  thing  about  them? 

THE  COUNT.     I  presume  not. 

BANNAL.  Then  how  could  you  write  about  them  until 
you  knew  which  was  Pinero  and  which  was  Jones?  .  .  . 

THE  COUNT.  But  is  it  a  good  play,  Mr.  Bannal? 
That's  a  simple  question. 

BANNAL.  Simple  enough  when  you  know.  If  it's  by 
a  good  author,  it's  a  good  play,  naturally.  That  stands 
to  reason.  Who  is  the  author?  Tell  me  that;  and  I'll 
place  the  play  for  you  to  a  hair's  breadth. 

THE  COUNT.  I'm  sorry  I'm  not  at  liberty  to  divulge 
the  author's  name.  The  author  desires  that  the  play 
should  be  judged  on  its  merits. 

BANNAL.  But  what  merits  can  it  have  except  the 
author's  merits? 


DRAMATIC  AND  THEATRICAL  TALENT     151 

This  satiric  conversation  affords  the  only  reasonable 
explanation  of  the  fact  that  the  plays  of  Mr.  John 
Galsworthy  have  been  persistently  overpraised,  both 
by  popular  dramatic  critics  like  Mr.  Flawner  Bannal 
and  by  academic  annotators  who  prefer  to  study  the 
current  drama  in  the  library  instead  of  in  the  theatre. 
Mr.  Galsworthy  is  a  great  man:  in  his  own  familiar 
field  of  literary  composition,  he  is  a  great  artist :  there- 
fore [according  to  the  syllogism  of  these  commenta- 
tors], any  play  by  Mr.  Galsworthy  must  be  a  great 
play. 

In  The  Modern  Drama,  by  Professor  Ludwig  Lewi- 
sohn  of  the  Ohio  State  University,  we  encounter  the 
assertion  that  Mr.  Galsworthy,  "  above  all  other  men 
now  in  view,  seems  called  and  chosen  as  the  great  mod- 
ern dramatist  of  the  English  tongue."  Thus — in  a 
single  ex  cathedra  statement — a  literary  artist  who  has 
merely  turned  to  the  theatre  as  a  secondary  medium 
of  expression  is  regarded  as  a  more  important  drama- 
turgic craftsman  than  the  authors  of  The  Second  Mrs. 
Tanqueray,  and  Michael  and  His  Lost  Angel,  and  Alice 
Sit-By-The-Fire,  and  Candida,  and  The  Voysey  In- 
heritance, and  The  Mollusc,  and  Hindle  Wakes,  and 
Don.  Any  play  by  Mr.  Galsworthy  must  be  "  a  good 
play,"  for  the  overwhelming  reason  that  it  has  been 
written  by  "  a  good  author  " ;  but  no  such  overwhelm- 
ing preestablishment  of  a  necessity  for  praise  exists, 
apparently,  in  favor  of  any  play  by  Pinero,  Jones, 
Barrie,  Shaw,  Barker,  Davies,  Stanley  Houghton,  or 
Rudolf  Besier. 

The  reaction  of  the  scholarly  and  academic  mind  of 


152     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

Professor  Ludwig  Lewisohn  is  supplemented,  in  this 
instance,  by  the  reactions  of  most  of  our  popular  dra- 
matic critics.  Any  play  by  Mr.  Galsworthy  that  is 
produced  within  the  region  of  Times  Square  is  called  a 
great  play,  as  a  matter  of  course,  for  the  simple  reason 
that  it  was  written  by  an  author  who  [like  Caesar's 
wife]  is  commonly  regarded  as  superior  to  criticism. 
The  Flawner  Bannals  of  our  daily  press,  who  seldom 
hesitate  to  sneer  at  the  lifelong-practised  technical  ac- 
complishment of  Pinero  and  Jones,  and  to  smile  indul- 
gently at  the  tender  and  quite  irresistible  appeal  of 
Barrie,  are  accustomed  to  remove  their  hats  and  stand 
in  reverence  when  any  play  by  Mr.  Galsworthy  is  pro- 
duced. This  emotion,  of  course,  must  be  recorded  to 
their  credit,  for  it  is  always  a  laudatory  gesture  to 
remove  the  hat;  and  the  poorest  play  by  Mr.  Gals- 
worthy is  so  much  nobler  in  intention  than  nine-tenths 
of  all  the  efforts  of  our  local  playwrights  that  the  mood 
of  reverence  is  unavoidable ;  but  is  it,  therefore,  reason- 
able to  assume,  without  discussion,  that  The  Eldest  Son 
is  a  bigger  play  than  Hindle  Wakes  or  that  The  Fugi- 
tive is  a  greater  play  than  Iris?  Must  an  honest  rec- 
ognition of  the  fact  that  Mr.  Galsworthy  is  a  superior 
person  force  us  also  to  assert  that  he  is  an  impeccable 
playwright?  If  this  argument  should  be  accepted,  the 
critic  would  be  required  to  assume  that  Raphael  [by 
virtue  of  that  fabled  "  century  of  sonnets  "]  must  have 
been  a  great  poet  because  of  his  unquestionable  talent 
as  a  painter. 

That  Mr.  Galsworthy  has  earned  a  right  to  be  re- 
garded as  one  of  the  dozen  leading  playwrights  now 


DRAMATIC  AND  THEATRICAL  TALENT     153 

writing  in  the  English  language,  no  commentator  would 
deny.  His  plays  exhibit  a  distinction  which  sets  them 
easily  apart  from  the  ordinary  sort  of  trash  that  is 
produced  within  the  region  of  Times  Square.  But  it 
is  one  thing  to  elevate  an  artist  to  the  peerage,  and  it 
is  quite  another  thing  to  exalt  him  higher  than  his  peers. 
Before  admitting  any  playwright  to  the  narrow  upper 
circle  of  superiority,  the  critic  is  required  to  demand, — 
first,  that  the  dramatist  shall  always  have  something  to 
say ;  second,  that  he  shall  always  be  able  to  express  his 
theme  intelligibly  through  the  medium  of  the  contem- 
porary theatre ;  third,  that  his  characters  shall  be  true 
to  life  without  exception ;  and  fourth,  that  his  dialogue 
shall  be  written  with  simplicity  and  dignity.  These  re- 
quirements are  always  easily  fulfilled  by  Mr.  Gals- 
worthy; but  they  have  also  been  fulfilled,  with  equal 
ease,  by  Pinero,  Jones,  Barrie,  Shaw,  Barker,  Davies, 
Houghton,  Besier,  and  several  other  living  writers  of 
our  English-speaking  drama. 

The  quarrel  of  the  present  commentator  is  directed 
not  against  the  popular  opinion  which  regards  the 
plays  of  Mr.  Galsworthy  as  compositions  to  be  consid- 
ered reverently,  but  against  a  quite  illogical  exaggera- 
tion of  this  popular  opinion  which  leads  to  the  assump- 
tion that  Mr.  Galsworthy  is  a  better  playwright  than 
any  of  his  peers.  In  particular,  the  ire  of  the  present 
critic  is  aroused  when  he  encounters  the  frequently  ex- 
pressed opinion  that  Mr.  Galsworthy  is  a  greater  play- 
wright than  Pinero, — or,  to  state  the  matter  more  spe- 
cifically, that  the  author  of  The  Fugitive  is  an  abler 
dramatist  than  the  author  of  Iris. 


154     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

Mr.  Galsworthy  is  not  a  great  playwright.  He  may 
be  a  great  man,  he  may  be  a  great  novelist,  he  may  be  a 
great  writer ;  but  he  is  not,  on  these  accounts,  to  be 
regarded  as  a  great  dramatist, — any  more  than  Ros- 
setti,  by  virtue  of  his  noble  poetry,  can  be  regarded  as 
a  noble  painter.  Mr.  Galsworthy  lacks  essentially  a 
feeling  for  the  theatre, — a  natural  enjoyment  of  that 
spontaneous  response  which  may  be  called  forth  from 
a  gathered  audience.  He  entered  the  theatre  at  a 
period  comparatively  late  in  his  career;  and  he  will 
never  learn  to  love  it  [and,  in  consequence,  to  under- 
stand it]  so  deeply  and  so  intimately  as  men  who  were 
brought  up  behind  the  footlights,  like  Sir  Arthur 
Pinero  and  Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones. 

That  Olympian  impartiality  of  mind  in  considering  a 
social  thesis, — that  God-like  lack  of  special  sympathy 
in  regard  to  any  of  his  characters, — that  air  of  casu- 
ally saying,  "  This  is  true,  and  it  is  no  concern  of  mine ; 
but  what  do  you  intend  to  do  about  it?," — these  traits, 
which  appeal  to  the  philosophic  commentator,  are  re- 
pugnant to  the  ordinary  theatre-goer.  The  average 
spectator  prefers  to  see  a  struggle  between  people  whom 
he  is  expected  to  like  and  people  whom  he  is  ex- 
pected to  dislike:  he  prefers  to  attend  a  play,  as  he 
attends  a  ball-game,  with  a  pre-determined  spirit  to 
"  root  "  for  one  team  against  the  other.  This  ele- 
mental human  impulse,  Mr.  Galsworthy  has  chosen  to 
ignore.  His  plays  are  destitute  of  heroes  and  of  vil- 
lains. He  has  a  disconcerting  way  of  asking  questions 
which  he  subsequently  says  that  he  himself  is  quite  in- 
capable of  answering.  Thus,  in  The  Pigeon,  he  has 


DRAMATIC  AND  THEATRICAL  TALENT     155 

posed  a  social  problem  which  he  asserts  to  be  beyond 
the  scope  of  resolution.  The  casual  and  accidental 
theatre-goer — for  whom  our  plays  are  made — is  not 
attracted  by  these  difficulties :  he  prefers  to  take  sides 
in  a  struggle  that  has  sharply  been  defined  and  to 
applaud  a  protagonist  who  either  wins  his  fight  or 
"  goes  down  scornful  before  many  spears." 

Mr.  Galsworthy  bears  "  without  abuse  the  grand  old 
name  of  gentleman."  Among  all  contemporary  writers 
of  the  English  language,  he  is  easily  the  most  patri- 
cian. But  the  drama  is  a  democratic  art,  and  Mr. 
Galsworthy — in  the  theatre — often  sacrifices  the  ap- 
peal of  one  who  knows  the  people  and  enjoys  what  they 
enjoy.  Always,  there  seems  to  hover  over  and  about 
his  plays  an  atmosphere  that  pre-assumes  a  lack  of 
sympathy  between  the  author  and  the  audience.  Mr. 
Galsworthy  does  not  write  for  the  theatre-going  multi- 
tude; he  writes  only  for  himself  and  for  his  tutelary 
deity ;  and  the  multitude — the  toiling,  tired,  laughing, 
weeping,  sweating,  sighing  crowd — may  take  his  plays 
or  leave  them,  as  they  choose.  The  born  playwrights — 
like  Pinero,  Jones,  or  Barrie — are  sedulously  careful 
always  to  avoid  any  assumption  of  superiority  above 
the  public.  Their  attitude  toward  life  is  not  Olympian : 
they  adopt,  instead,  as  their  device,  the  democratic 
motto, — "  Out  of  many,  one." 

But  the  main  deficiency  of  Mr.  Galsworthy  as  a 
dramatist  is  his  constitutional  inability — or  else  dis- 
inclination— to  make  the  most  effective  use  of  his 
materials.  Mr.  Galsworthy  is  singularly  lacking  in 
theatrical  talent.  It  is  conceivable,  of  course,  that  Mr. 


156     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

Galsworthy  would  deny  that  "  the  one  great  function 
of  the  theatre  "  is  "  the  production  of  a  peculiar  kind 
of  emotional  effect  " ;  but  a  solidly-established  fact  can- 
not be  overturned  by  a  denial.  Unless  Sir  Arthur 
Pinero  is  right  in  this  assertion,  we  must  be  prepared 
to  insist  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  an  art  of  making 
plays ;  and  if  the  dramaturgic  art  does  not  exist,  there 
can  be  no  such  thing  as  dramatic  criticism.  If  Mr. 
Galsworthy — because  of  his  non-technical  intentions — 
must  be  regarded  as  immune  from  criticism  on  the  score 
of  craftsmanship,  there  is  nothing  to  be  said  about  his 
plays  beyond  a  merely  personal  expression  of  a  fond- 
ness or  a  lack  of  fondness  for  one  composition  or 
another. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  Mr.  Galsworthy  tries  always, 
in  his  plays,  to  "  produce  a  peculiar  kind  of  emotional 
effect  " ;  but  he  has  failed,  in  nearly  every  instance,  to 
"  give  rise  to  the  greatest  possible  amount  "  of  this 
effect.  He  has  never  written  a  play — with  the  possible 
exception  of  Strife — that  might  not  have  been  improved 
by  the  collaboration  of  a  more  accomplished  craftsman, 
like  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  or  Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones. 
Mr.  Galsworthy's  besetting  fault  is  a  failure  in  con- 
struction. His  plays,  without  exception,  have  been 
patterned  carefully;  but,  with  only  one  or  two  excep- 
tions, they  have  been  patterned  ineffectively. 

His  main  trouble  is  a  failure  to  distinguish  between 
those  passages  of  a  dramatic  narrative  that  must  nec- 
essarily be  shown  upon  the  stage  and  those  other  pas- 
sages which  may  safely  be  assumed  to  happen  off-stage 
between  the  acts.  In  other  words — to  quote  a  famous 


DRAMATIC  AND  THEATRICAL  TALENT     157 

phrase  of  Sarcey's — he  lacks  an  instinct  for  the  scene  a 
faire.  This  arraignment  of  his  craftsmanship  is  aggra- 
vated— not  alleviated — by  the  fact  that,  many  times, 
he  seems  to  dodge  deliberately  the  "  big  scene  "  that 
stands  waiting  to  his  hand.  The  proper  business  of  a 
playwright  is  to  make  a  play;  and  it  is  not  to  be  re- 
garded as  an  indication  of  superiority  for  an  artist  to 
refrain  deliberately  from  the  most  effective  exercise  of 
which  his  art  is  capable.  Some  years  ago,  a  witty  com- 
mentator said  of  Mrs.  Fiske  that  she  showed  a  tendency 
to  "  over-act  her  under-acting  " ;  and  it  might  be  said  of 
Mr.  Galsworthy  that  he  shows  a  tendency  to  trader- 
dramatize  his  dramas. 

Consider  The  Fugitive,  for  instance.  This  play  has 
been  called  a  masterpiece  by  many  commentators.  The 
story  is  interesting,  the  characters  are  true  to  life,  the 
dialogue  is  written  with  that  high  regard  for  truth 
which  is  mystically  indistinguishable  from  a  high  regard 
for  beauty ;  and  yet  the  play  is  ineffective,  because  it  ic 
faultily  constructed.  It  is  impossible  to  resist  the  im- 
pression that  Mr.  Galsworthy  would  have  done  far 
better  with  this  story  if  he  had  used  it  as  the  basis  of  a 
novel  instead  of  as  the  basis  of  a  play;  and  the  reason 
for  this  judgment  is  that  the  most  significant  and  most 
dramatic  passages  of  the  entire  narrative  are  those 
which  are  assumed  to  happen  off  the  stage  between  the 
acts.  The  scenes  which  we  are  shown  are  less  impres- 
sive than  those  other  scenes  which  we  are  denied  the 
privilege  of  witnessing. 

If  any  evidence  were  needed  to  attest  the  immeasur- 
able superiority  of  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  over  Mr. 


158     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

Galsworthy  as  a  dramaturgic  craftsman,  it  would 
be  sufficient  merely  to  study  side  by  side  the  text 
of  The  Fugitive  and  the  text  of  Iris.  The  themes  of 
these  two  dramas  are  very  nearly  similar.  In  each 
play,  we  are  invited  to  review  the  gradual  degradation 
of  a  woman  of  beautiful  tastes  and  worthy  impulses 
because  she  lacks  sufficient  strength  to  fight  success- 
fully against  adversity.  Clare  Dedmond,  like  Iris  Bel- 
lamy, is  too  fine  to  accept  a  regimen  of  life  on  terms 
that  are  unlovely ;  but  neither  heroine  is  fine  enough  to 
rise  superior  to  the  insidious  assaults  of  poverty.  To 
this  extent,  the  fundamental  stories  of  the  two  plays 
are  identical ;  but  there  is  a  world  of  difference  between 
the  finished  products. 

Pinero,  in  the  patterning  of  Iris,  has  not  missed  a 
single  scene  a  faire.  He  seizes  and  develops  all  the  high 
points  of  his  story,  and  removes  to  the  limbo  of  his  off- 
stage narrative  only  such  passages  as  are  subsidiary  to 
the  conduct  of  his  plot.  But,  in  The  Fugitive,  we  feel 
that  several  passages  which  are  narrated  retrospec- 
tively are  more  important  than  those  other  scenes  in 
the  course  of  which  these  off-stage  happenings  are  ex- 
pounded, so  to  speak,  at  second  hand.  Thus,  we  wish 
to  see  exemplified  upon  the  stage  the  experience  of 
Clare  as  a  shop-girl  in  a  department  store,  which  is 
assumed  to  happen  between  the  second  act  and  the 
third ;  and,  again,  we  are  made  uncomfortably  conscious 
of  a  hiatus  between  the  penultimate  and  the  final  act. 
We  have  seen  Clare  Dedmond  drift,  penniless  and  help- 
less, from  the  home  of  the  lover  who  has  sheltered  her ; 
and  next  we  see  her,  six  months  later,  at  the  point  of 


DRAMATIC  AND  THEATRICAL  TALENT     159 

accepting  the  career  of  a  common  prostitute:  but  we 
are  never  told  by  what  means  she  has  managed  to  keep 
herself  alive  throughout  this  rather  lengthy  interval. 

Each  successive  crisis  in  the  gradual  disintegration 
of  the  character  of  Iris  is  shown  and  illustrated  on  the 
stage  "  in  such  skilfully  devised  form  and  order  "  as 
to  "  give  rise  to  the  greatest  possible  amount  of  ... 
emotional  effect."  Mr.  Galsworthy's  conduct  of  a  simi- 
lar story,  in  The  Fugitive,  is  comparatively  faltering 
and  ineffective.  In  this  instance,  Mr.  Galsworthy  has 
met  a  peer,  in  a  fair  fight  on  equal  ground — just  as  he 
met  a  peer  in  Stanley  Houghton  when  he  wrote  The 
Eldest  Son;  and,  in  both  cases,  he  has  been  quite  easily 
unhorsed  by  an  antagonist  who  was  more  greatly  gifted 
with  an  instinct  for  the  exigencies  of  the  theatre. 


I 

THE  recent  great  success  of  Treasure  Island  at  the 
Punch  and  Judy  Theatre  has  made  many  people  won- 
der why  so  few  of  the  buoyant  and  bracing  tales  of 
R.L.S.  have  been  transferred  to  the  service  of  the  stage, 
and  has  attracted  the  immediate  attention  of  literary 
students  to  the  entire  subject  of  Stevenson's  relations 
with  the  theatre. 

Stevenson  was  a  man  of  many  moods,  and  his  atti- 
tude toward  the  question  of  composition  for  the  theatre 
was  subject  to  frequent  oscillations;  but  the  poles  of 
his  opinion  may  be  pointed  out  by  comparing  two 
passages  in  his  letters.  At  one  time,  he  wrote  to  his 
father,  "  The  theatre  is  a  gold  mine ;  and  on  that  I 
must  keep  my  eye ! "  Years  later,  he  wrote  from 
Vailima  to  Sir  Sidney  Colvin,  "  No,  I  will  not  write  a 
play  for  Irving,  nor  for  the  devil.  Can  you  not  see 
that  the  work  of  falsification  which  a  play  demands  is 
of  all  tasks  the  most  ungrateful?  And  I  have  done 
it  a  long  while — and  nothing  ever  came  of  it."  The 
first  passage  was  penned  in  the  high  tide  of  his  ambition 
as  a  playwright,  and  the  second  passage  was  written 

160 


STEVENSON  ON  THE  STAGE  161 

after  this  ambition  had  been  quenched  by  disappoint- 
ment. 

Stevenson  wrote  four  plays  in  collaboration  with 
William  Ernest  Henley,  and  a  fifth  play  in  collabora- 
tion with  Mrs.  Stevenson.  The  last  of  these,  The 
Hanging  Judge,  which  was  written  at  Bournemouth 
early  in  1887,  has  never  been  acted,  and  was  never 
printed,  even  privately,  during  the  life-time  of  R.L.S. 
After  her  husband's  death,  Mrs.  Stevenson  printed  a 
few  copies  and  presented  them  to  his  intimate  friends. 
I  have  seen  a  copy  of  this  issue  in  the  library  of  Mr. 
William  Archer;  but,  in  a  very  hasty  reading,  I  failed 
to  discover  any  noticeable  merit  in  the  play.  In  1914, 
Mr.  Edmund  Gosse  printed  privately  an  edition  of 
The  Hanging  Judge  that  was  limited  to  thirty  copies ; 
but,  so  far  as  the  general  reader  is  concerned,  the  piece 
remains  unpublished. 

But  the  four  plays  which  Stevenson  produced  in 
partnership  with  Henley  are  published  in  the  works  of 
R.L.S. ;  and  all  four  of  them,  at  one  time  or  another, 
have  been  acted  on  the  stage.  Deacon  Brodie  was  first 
produced  at  Pullan's  Theatre  of  Varieties,  Bradford,  on 
December  28, 1882.  In  March,  1883,  a  performance  of 
the  play  took  place  at  Her  Majesty's  Theatre,  Aber- 
deen ;  and  on  the  afternoon  of  July  2,  1884,  it  was 
introduced  to  the  London  public  at  the  Prince's 
Theatre.  Admiral  Guinea  was  produced  at  an  after- 
noon performance  at  the  Avenue  Theatre,  in  London, 
on  November  29,  1897;  and  Beau  Austin  was  produced 
at  the  Haymarket  Theatre,  in  London,  on  November  3, 
1890,  with  Mr.  Beerbohm  Tree  [later  Sir  Herbert 


162     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

Tree]  in  the  title  part.  I  can  find  no  record,  in  my 
notes,  of  the  first  performance  of  Macaire;  but  this 
piece,  also,  has  been  produced  in  public.  Stevenson, 
however,  never  witnessed  a  performance  of  any  of  his 
plays,  and  was  never  even  privileged  to  see  a  scene  of  his 
enacted  in  rehearsal. 

The  only  one  of  these  four  plays  which  exhibited 
any  indication  of  vitality  in  the  theatre  was  the  first, 
and  perhaps  the  poorest,  of  them  all, — Deacon  Brodic. 
In  1887  this  piece  was  presented  in  several  cities  in 
America, — the  tour  opening  at  Montreal  on  September 
26 ;  but  its  comparative  success  must  be  ascribed  less 
to  its  own  merits  as  a  melodrama  than  to  the  very 
interesting  acting  of  Edward  John  Henley,  the  brother 
of  Stevenson's  collaborator. 

Deacon  Brodie,  which  was  elaborated  from  an  early 
draft  made  by  Stevenson  himself,  was  completed  by 
Stevenson  and  Henley  in  1880,  but  was  subsequently 
revised  and  rewritten.  Admiral  Guinea,  Beau  Austin, 
and  Macaire  were  all  composed  in  1884  and  1885,  dur- 
ing the  period  of  Stevenson's  residence  at  Bournemouth. 
His  health,  at  that  period,  was  at  its  very  lowest  ebb; 
most  of  his  time  was  spent  perforce  in  bed;  and  his 
main  motive  in  embarking  on  the  collaboration  was 
merely  to  enliven  the  intervals  of  his  lingering  in  the 
"  land  of  counterpane  "  by  a  playful  exercise  of  spirits 
in  the  company  of  a  spirited  and  eager  friend.  There 
is  ample  evidence  that  Henley  took  their  joint  task 
much  more  seriously;  but  neither  of  the  two  collabo- 
rators had  established  a  professional  relation  with  the 
theatre. 


STEVENSON  ON  THE  STAGE  163 

As  Stevenson  looked  back  upon  these  plays,  he  clear- 
sightedly looked  down  upon  them.  In  July,  1884,  he 
wrote  frankly  to  Sir  Sidney  Colvin, — "  and  anyhow  the 
Deacon  is  damn  bad  " ;  and  in  March,  1887,  he  remon- 
strated with  Henley,  in  the  following  terms,  for  sending 
copies  of  their  joint  plays  to  their  literary  friends: — 
"The  reperusal  of  the  Admiral,  by  the  way,  was  a  sore 
blow;  eh,  God,  man,  it  is  a  low,  black,  dirty,  black- 
guard, ragged  piece ;  vomitable  in  many  parts — simpl3r 
vomitable.  .  .  .  Mac air e  is  a  piece  of  job-work,  hur- 
riedly bockled ;  might  have  been  worse,  might  have  been 
better ;  happy-go-lucky ;  act-it-or-let-it-rot  piece  of 
business.  Not  a  thing,  I  think,  to  send  in  presenta- 
tions." 

n 

These  dictates  of  self-criticism — destructive  as  they 
are — have  been,  in  the  main,  accepted  by  posterity; 
for,  even  among  ardent  Stevensonians,  the  plays  of 
Stevenson  and  Henley  have  found  very  few  apologists. 
A  recent  writer,  Mr.  Francis  Watt,  in  his  interesting 
book  entitled  R.L.S.,  has  gravely  stated  [page  249] 
that  "  the  plays  were  too  good  to  win  a  popular  suc- 
cess " ;  but  this  is  an  opinion  that  will  be  at  once  dis- 
trusted by  any  habitual  frequenter  of  the  theatre. 
Plays  do  not  fail  because  they  are  too  good:  they  fail 
because  they  are  not  good  enough  in  the  right  way. 

The  most  illuminative  criticism — in  fact,  the  only 
finally  authoritative  criticism — of  the  plays  of  Steven- 
son and  Henley  is  the  opinion  of  Sir  Arthur  Pinero, 
delivered  in  his  lecture  to  the  members  of  the  Philo- 


164     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

sophical  Institution  of  Edinburgh  at  the  Music  Hall  in 
Edinburgh  on  Tuesday,  February  24,  1903.  This  lec- 
ture— entitled  R.  L.  Stevenson:  the  Dramatist — has 
been  printed  only  privately  in  England,  because  Sir 
Arthur  has  an  ineradicable  habit  of  reserving  the  lime- 
light for  his  plays  and  keeping  out  of  it  himself;  but 
it  has  recently  been  published  in  this  country,  in  an 
edition  limited  to  three  hundred  and  thirty-three  copies, 
by  the  Dramatic  Museum  of  Columbia  University. 

Since,  however,  this  thoroughly  authoritative  paper 
is  still  unknown  to  the  generality  of  readers,  it  may  be 
profitable  to  summarize  its  most  important  points. 
The  first  of  these  is  that  "  One  of  the  great  rules — 
perhaps  the  only  universal  rule — of  the  drama  is  that 
you  cannot  pour  new  wine  into  old  skins.  .  .  .  The  art 
of  the  drama  is  not  stationary  but  progressive.  .  .  . 
Its  conditions  are  always  changing,  and  .  .  .  every 
dramatist  whose  ambition  it  is  to  produce  live  plays 
is  absolutely  bound  to  study  carefully,  and  I  may  even 
add  respectfully — at  any  rate  not  contemptuously — 
the  conditions  that  hold  good  for  his  own  age  and  gen- 
eration." The  second  important  point  is  Sir  Arthur's 
statement  that  "  dramatic  talent  "  is  of  service  in  the 
theatre  only  as  "  the  raw  material  of  theatrical  talent. 
.  .  .  Dramatic,  like  poetic,  talent  is  born,  not  made; 
if  it  is  to  achieve  success  on  the  stage,  it  must  be 
developed  into  theatrical  talent  by  hard  study,  and 
generally  by  long  practice."  Almost  equally  suggestive 
is  Sir  Arthur  Pinero's  distinction  between  what  he  calls 
the  "  strategy  "  and  the  "  tactics  "  of  play-making. 
He  defines  strategy  as  "  the  general  laying  out  of  a 


STEVENSON  ON  THE  STAGE  165 

play  "  and  tactics  as  "  the  art  of  getting  the  characters 
on  and  off  the  stage,  of  conveying  information  to  the 
audience,  and  so  forth."  His  fourth  important  point 
is  that  fine  speeches,  and  fine  speeches  alone,  will  not 
carry  a  drama  to  success ;  for  Sir  Arthur  makes  a 
clear  distinction  between  "  the  absolute  beauty  of 
words,  such  beauty  as  Ruskin  or  Pater  or  Newman 
might  achieve  in  an  eloquent  passage,"  and  "  the  beauty 
of  dramatic  fitness  to  the  character  and  the  situation." 

in 

In  the  light  of  these  four  principles,  Sir  Arthur 
Pinero  has  examined  the  plays  of  Stevenson  and  Hen- 
ley; and,  at  each  of  the  four  points,  he  has  found  the 
plays  defective.  Stevenson's  work  in  the  drama  was 
anachronistic;  and  the  models  that  he  imitated  not 
only  were  outworn  but  also  were  unworthy.  Steven- 
son never  took  the  trouble  to  develop  into  theatrical 
talent  the  keen  dramatic  talent  he  was  born  with.  He 
never  taught  himself  the  tactics  of  modern  play-making, 
and  did  not  even  appreciate  the  good  points  in  the 
strategy  of  the  melodramatists  he  chose  to  imitate. 
And,  finally,  Stevenson  never  managed  to  unlearn  the 
heresy  that  fine  speeches,  and  fine  speeches  alone,  will 
carry  a  drama  to  success. 

Sir  Arthur's  explanation  of  Stevenson's  fourfold 
failure  as  a  dramatist  is  equally  acute.  He  finds  that 
Stevenson  failed  to  take  the  drama  seriously,  that  he 
worked  at  it  "  in  a  smiling,  sportive,  half-contemptuous 
spirit,"  that  he  "  played  at  being  a  playwright  "  and 
"  was  fundamentally  in  error  in  regarding  the  drama  as 


166     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

a  matter  of  child's  play."  And,  in  a  very  interesting 
parallel,  Sir  Arthur  has  pointed  out  the  close  resem- 
blance between  Stevenson's  own  plays  and  those  typical 
examples  of  Skelt's  Juvenile  Drama  that  are  celebrated 
with  such  a  gusto  of  memorial  eloquence  in  that  delight- 
ful essay  in  Memories  and  Portraits  called  A  Penny 
Plain  and  Twopence  Colored.  "  Even  to  his  dying 
day,"  Sir  Arthur  adds,  "  he  continued  to  regard  the 
actual  theatre  as  only  an  enlarged  form  of  the  toy 
theatres  which  had  fascinated  his  childhood  ...  he 
considered  his  function  as  a  dramatist  very  little  more 
serious  than  that  child's-play  with  paint-box  and  paste- 
board on  which  his  memory  dwelt  so  fondly." 

This  criticism  of  the  plays  of  Stevenson  and  Henley, 
delivered  by  the  finest  dramaturgic  artist  still  living  in 
the  world  to-day,  must  be  accepted  as  final ;  but  a  word 
or  two  should  be  appended  in  explanation  of  Stevenson's 
utter  lack  of  preparation  for  the  serious  task  of  making 
plays.  Owing  mainly  to  the  accident  of  birth — for 
Stevenson  was  born  in  a  rigorous  metropolis  that  re- 
fused to  countenance  the  theatre — and  owing  also  to 
the  accident  of  his  continuous  ill-health,  he  grew  up 
without  ever  going  to  the  theatre;  and  his  earliest  im- 
pressions of  the  stage  were  confined,  necessarily,  to  the 
repertory  of  the  toy-theatre  that  he  has  celebrated  with 
enthusiasm  in  the  famous  essay  that  Sir  Arthur  has 
referred  to.  Stevenson's  biographer,  Mr.  Graham  Bal- 
four,  has  stated  [Volume  I,  page  161], — "Although 
he  had  read  (and  written)  plays  from  his  early  years, 
had  reveled  in  the  melodramas  of  the  toy-theatre,  and 
had  acted  with  the  Jenkins  and  in  other  private  theatri- 


STEVENSON  ON  THE  STAGE  167 

cals,  I  find  no  reference  to  his  having  visited  a  theatre 
before  December,  1874."  At  this  date,  Stevenson  was 
twenty-four  years  old;  and  it  is  not  at  all  surprising 
that  an  author  who  first  visited  the  theatre  at  the 
age  of  twenty-four  should  show  himself  deficient  as  a 
dramatist  when  he  casually  undertook  the  task  of  mak- 
ing plays  in  his  early  thirties. 

In  view  of  these  facts,  its  seems  only  fair  that  Henley, 
more  than  Stevenson,  should  be  called  to  account  for 
the  manifest  anachronism  of  their  plays ;  for  Henley 
was  a  magazine-editor,  and  ought  presumably  to  have 
kept  himself  in  touch  with  the  fashions  of  the  theatre 
in  his  day.  But  it  is  possible,  of  course,  that  Henley 
was  deterred  from  theatre-going  by  his  bodily  in- 
firmity,— an  infirmity  much  more  painful  and  disas- 
trous than  that  which  kept  Stevenson  isolated  in  his  bed 
at  Bournemouth.  At  any  rate,  the  one  thing  which  the 
two  collaborators  never  understood  was  the  fact  that 
the  technique  of  the  theatre  had  advanced  beyond  re- 
membrance of  the  period  of  those  transpontine  melo- 
dramatists  that  they  so  blithely  imitated. 

IV 

What  Stevenson  needed  most  of  all  was  a  different 
collaborator, — not  a  man  of  letters  like  Henley,  but  a 
man  of  the  theatre  like  (for  instance)  Mr.  Henry 
Arthur  Jones,  whose  famous  melodrama,  The  Silver 
King,  had  already  been  produced  in  1882.  He  needed 
a  professional  assistant,  to  translate  into  terms  of 
theatrical  talent  the  keen  dramatic  talent  he  was  born 
with.  A  collaborator  of  this  type  has  lately  been 


168     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

accorded  to  him,  through  the  enterprise  of  Mr.  Charles 
Hopkins,  the  director  of  the  Punch  and  Judy  Theatre. 
Treasure  Island  has  been  dramatized  by  Mr.  Jules 
Eckert  Goodman, — a  playwright  whose  sound  theatri- 
cal talent  has  been  developed  to  efficiency  by  hard  study 
and  by  long  practice.  Mr.  Goodman  has  so  successfully 
transferred  the  rapture  and  the  thrill  of  Treasure 
Island  to  the  stage  that  the  delighted  spectator  comes 
away  from  the  performance  with  a  feeling  that  can 
only  be  expressed  by  quoting  Andrew  Lang's  ejacula- 
tion,— "  This  is  the  kind  of  stuff  a  fellow  wants  !  " 

The  magnitude  of  Mr.  Goodman's  accomplishment 
can  be  appreciated  only  if  we  take  into  account  the 
special  difficulties  of  his  task.  Nearly  all  the  critics 
who,  from  time  to  time,  had  been  consulted  concerning 
the  possibility  of  making  a  successful  play  from 
Treasure  Island  had  reported  in  the  negative;  and, 
among  the  many,  the  present  writer  is  compelled  to  con- 
fess that  he  agreed  with  the  majority.  The  special 
obstacles  were  three  in  number : — first,  the  utter  lack  of 
feminine  interest  in  the  story,  which  seemed  to  make 
the  material  dangerous  for  successful  exploitation  in  the 
theatre;  second,  the  apparent  necessity  of  shifting  the 
action  rapidly  from  place  to  place,  and  of  doing  this  at 
least  a  dozen  times  without  impeding  the  onrush  of  the 
action;  and  third,  the  particular  requirement,  in  the 
case  of  a  story  known  and  loved  by  absolutely  every- 
body, of  clinging  close  to  the  original  material  and 
inventing  nothing  new. 

But  these  three  difficulties  have  been  swept  away  by 
Mr.  Goodman.  Despite  the  tradition  of  the  theatre 


STEVENSON  ON  THE  STAGE  169 

that  the  public  cares  much  more  for  actresses  than 
actors,  the  audience  never  seems  to  notice  the  absence 
of  any  feminine  interest  in  the  narrative.  Jim's  mother 
is,  of  course,  the  only  woman  in  the  story,  and  she 
appears  only  inconspicuously,  for  a  few  moments  in  the 
first  act ;  but  the  play  succeeds  so  well  without  a 
heroine  that  a  necessary  inference  is  forced  that  love  is 
not,  by  any  means,  the  only  subject  that  can  capture 
the  attention  of  the  theatre-going  crowd. 

Mr.  Goodman  has  arranged  the  narrative  in  ten  dif- 
ferent chapters  of  ftime  and  nine  distinct  pigeon-holes 
of  place;  but  the  changes  are  so  rapidly  and  easily 
effected  on  the  stage  of  Mr.  Hopkins  that  the  spectator 
is  never  released  from  the  enthrallment  of  the  story. 
The  first  act  is,  by  far,  the  best,  and  this  fact  is  a  little 
unfortunate  for  the  play ;  but  the  fault  is  Stevenson's, 
not  Mr.  Goodman's.  Stevenson  began  his  story  in  a 
high  tide  of  delighted  composition;  but,  after  drying 
up  in  the  early  paragraphs  of  the  sixteenth  chapter, 
he  never  entirely  recaptured  the  zest  of  the  initiation 
of  his  narrative.  Mr.  Goodman's  first  act,  which  is 
set,  of  course,  in  the  Admiral  Benbow  Inn,  is  quite  as 
good  as  any  first  act  has  a  right  to  be;  for  if  the 
theatre  were  often  as  enthralling  as  this,  no  self- 
respecting  person  could  ever  find  an  evening  off,  to  sit 
at  home  and  read  The  Count  of  Monte  Cristo. 

But  Mr.  Goodman's  success  is  perhaps  even  more 
remarkable  in  respect  to  the  third  difficulty  that  con- 
fronted him.  He  has  made  a  coherent  play  without 
inventing  anything  that  was  not  set  down  for  him  in 
the  well-known  and  well-beloved  novel;  and  he  has  not 


170     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

left  out  anything  that  even  Andrew  Lang  would 
emphatically  miss.  The  great  bother  about  dramatiz- 
ing books  for  boys  is,  of  course,  that  every  boy  in  the 
audience  will  at  once  become  a  critic  and  will  insist  on 
having  the  story  served  to  him — in  Mr.  Kipling's  phrase 
— "just  so."  When  the  present  writer  first  attended  the 
performance,  a  concentrated  company  of  four  boys  sat 
in  back  of  him.  There  was  a  scene  on  the  deck  of  the 
Hispaniola,  disclosing  the  well-known  apple-barrel 
"  standing  broached  in  the  waist."  There  were  indica- 
tions of  impending  mutiny,  as  the  ragged  members  of 
Flint's  old  crew  muttered  darkling  in  the  corners  of 
the  stage.  Jim  entered,  strolling  down  the  deck.  "  Get 
into  the  barrel,"  said  one  of  the  boys  behind  me. 
"  Hurry  up  and  get  into  the  barrel,  before  they  see 
you:  hurry  up  and  hide,  or  how  can  you  overhear 
what  they  are  going  to  say?"  This  comment  con- 
vinced the  critic  that  the  play  was  undeniably 
successful;  but  it  also  seemed  to  point  a  finger 
at  the  greatest  difficulty  which  the  dramatist  was 
overcoming. 

While  glancing  at  this  little  point  of  Mr.  Goodman's 
meticulous  exactitude,  the  writer  may  perhaps  be  par- 
doned for  pointing  out  the  fact  that,  though  Steven- 
son's Hispaniola  was  a  schooner,  the  ship  disclosed 
upon  the  stage  of  the  Punch  and  Judy  Theatre  was  not 
a  schooner  but  a  square-rigged  vessel.  This  variation 
is,  however,  easily  forgivable;  for  Stevenson  himself 
confessed  that  the  Hispaniola  ought  really  to  have  been 
a  brig,  and  that  the  only  reason  why  he  made  her  a 
schooner  was  that  [in  August,  1874]  he  had  cruised  for 


STEVENSON  ON  THE  STAGE  171 

a  month  in  a  schooner  yacht,  and  that  he  had  never 
actually  been  aboard  a  square-rigged  ship  at  sea. 


The  success  of  Treasure  Island  on  the  stage  has 
called  attention  to  the  fact  that  comparatively  few  of 
the  tales  of  R.L.S.  have  enjoyed  a  similar  transference 
to  the  theatre.  Mr.  T.  Russell  Sullivan's  dramatization 
of  Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde  has  heretofore  stood  almost 
alone  as  an  example  of  what  may  be  done  with  the 
Stevenson  stories  on  the  stage ;  and  this  play  derived  its 
public  popularity  less  from  the  inherent  interest  of  the 
subject-matter  than  from  the  very  remarkable  acting  of 
the  late  Richard  Mansfield.  Mr.  Mansfield,  who  was 
accustomed  to  consider  very  highly  his  own  perform- 
ance of  Beau  Brummel  and  to  speak  with  an  entirely 
becoming  pride  of  his  best  achievements  on  the  stage, 
told  the  present  writer,  not  once  but  many  times,  that 
his  performance  of  Jekyll  and  Hyde  was  little  more 
than  a  matter  of  theatric  mechanism,  and  expressed 
surprise  at  the  continued  favor  of  the  public  for  the 
play.  "  It's  nothing  but  clap-trap,"  said  Mr.  Mans- 
field, "  yet  they  seem  to  like  it  as  much  as  Richard  HI, 
in  which  I  give  a  performance  that  is  worth  consider- 
ing." The  fact  remains,  however,  that  the  play  died 
with  Mr.  Mansfield's  death;  and  that  its  continuous 
vitality  for  many  years  was  due  more  to  him  than  to 
Mr.  Sullivan  or  Stevenson. 

It  may  be  interesting  to  record  the  fact  that  Steven- 
son never  witnessed  Mr.  Mansfield's  performance  in  the 
dual  role  of  his  hero  and  his  villain.  At  the  first  night 


172     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

in  New  York,  in  the  Madison  Square  Theatre,  on  Mon- 
day evening,  September  12,  1887,  Stevenson's  wife  and 
mother  saw  the  performance  from  Mr.  Sullivan's  box; 
but,  on  this  occasion,  the  novelist  himself  was  lying  ill 
in  Newport  at  the  house  of  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Charles  Fair- 
child,  and  he  never  subsequently  saw  the  play. 

After  Stevenson's  death,  Mr.  Otis  Skinner  appeared 
in  a  dramatic  version  of  Prince  Otto, — made,  if  I 
remember  rightly,  by  himself;  but  the  piece  was  not 
successful.  On  April  22,  1917,  the  Morningside  Play- 
ers produced  at  the  Comedy  Theatre  in  New  York 
an  adequate  dramatization  of  Markheim,  by  Zillah  K. 
MacDonald.  Mention  must  also  be  made  of  Mr.  Gran- 
ville  Barker's  dramatization  of  The  Wrong  Box,  en- 
titled The  Morris  Dance,  which  was  disclosed  at  the 
Little  Theatre  in  New  York  in  February,  1917.  This 
was  a  very  vapid  play;  and  it  went  down  swiftly  to  a 
thoroughly  deserved  oblivion.  I  find  among  my  notes 
no  other  records  of  plays  made  professionally  from  the 
tales  of  Stevenson,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  scat- 
tered and  unimportant  one-act  versions  of  various 
short-stories. 

VI 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  the  tales  of  Stevenson  were, 

v 

for  the  most  part,  left  untouched  throughout  that 
period  of  the  eighteen-nineties  when  there  was  a  popu- 
lar and  insistent  demand  for  dramatized  novels, — the 
period  when  the  indefatigable  Mr.  E.  E.  Rose  used  to 
dramatize  three  or  four  novels  a  year.  The  reason  for 
xhis  fact,  however,  will  easily  become  apparent.  It  is 


STEVENSON  ON  THE  STAGE  173 

true  enough,  as  Sir  Arthur  Pinero  has  reported,  that 
"  dramatic  talent  Stevenson  undoubtedly  possessed  in 
abundance."  His  tales  are  full  of  striking  situations, 
in  which  the  actors  appear  in  postures  which  are  vividly 
impressed  forever  on  the  eye  of  memory.  But  in  two 
respects  his  novels,  despite  their  emphasis  upon  the  ele- 
ment of  action  and  their  vividness  of  visual  appeal, 
have  been  singularly  difficult  to  dramatize.  In  the  first 
place,  Stevenson  usually  neglected  the  interest  of  love 
and  excluded  women  rigorously  from  his  most  exciting 
situations ;  and,  in  the  second  place,  he  was  accustomed 
to  allow  his  narratives  to  wander  very  freely  in  both 
space  and  time  and  to  depend  for  his  effect  on  a  fre- 
quent chance  of  setting.  How,  for  instance,  could  one 
dramatize  The  Wrecker,  which  keeps  the  reader  travel- 
ing over  more  than  half  the  habitable  globe?;  and  how 
could  one  dramatize  Kidnapped,  which  leads  the  reader 
to  a  world  in  which  there  seem  to  be  no  women? 

These  objections,  though  they  appear  to  explain  the 
fact  that  very  few  playwrights  have  attempted  to  trans- 
fer the  tales  of  Stevenson  to  the  service  of  the  theatre, 
afford  no  reason  why  they  may  not  be  successfully 
transferred  to  the  service  of  the  new  and  growing 
medium  of  moving-pictures.  Treasure  Island,  for  ex- 
ample, would  make  a  better  moving-picture  than  a 
play.  It  may  sanely  be  conjectured  that,  if  Stevenson 
were  living  still  [and  it  is  a  sad  fact  to  remember  that 
even  now  he  would  be  only  sixty-seven  years  old],  he 
would  probably  devote  his  mind  enthusiastically  to  the 
new  craft  of  making  moving-pictures.  In  his  Gossip 
on  Romance,  he  said, — "  The  story,  if  it  be  a  story, 


174     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

should  repeat  itself  in  a  thousand  colored  pictures  to 
the  eye.  .  .  .  There  is  a  vast  deal  in  life  .  .  .  where 
the  interest  turns  .  .  .  not  on  the  passionate  slips  and 
hesitations  of  the  conscience,  but  on  the  problems  of  the 
body  and  of  the  practical  intelligence,  in  clean,  open- 
air  adventure,  the  shock  of  arms  or  the  diplomacy  of 
life.  With  such  material  as  this  it  is  impossible  to  build 
a  play,  for  the  serious  theatre  exists  solely  on  moral 
grounds,  and  is  a  standing  proof  of  the  dissemination 
of  the  human  conscience.  But  it  is  possible  to  build, 
upon  this  ground,  .  .  .  the  most  lively,  beautiful,  and 
buoyant  tales." 

The  Master  of  Ballantrae  might  be  made  into  a  good 
play,  though  the  dramatist  would  experience  consider- 
able difficulty  in  projecting  the  last  act;  but  this  con- 
cluding passage  would  afford  the  very  best  material  for 
the  moving-picture  craftsman.  Kidnapped,  also,  could 
easily  be  shown  in  moving-pictures,  but  could  hardly 
be  compressed  into  a  play.  Stevenson,  in  his  stories, 
wrote  mainly  for  the  seeing  eye ;  he  was  less  concerned 
with  character  than  with  action  and  with  setting;  he 
exhibited  events,  harmoniously  set  in  place  and  time, 
and  he  never  disturbed  the  exhibition  by  psychological 
analysis.  His  literary  style  is  perhaps  his  greatest 
glory;  but,  even  if  bereft  of  this,  he  would  remain — to 
quote  him  once  again — a  master  of  "  brute  incident." 
While  still  alive,  he  failed  in  his  efforts  as  a  dramatist ; 
but  there  seems  to  be  no  reason  now  why  he  should  not 
enjoy  a  posthumous  success  as  a  master  of  the  moving- 
picture  play. 


XX 

THE  PLAYS  OF  LORD  DUNSANY 


IN  1914,  a  slender  volume  entitled  Five  Plays,  by 
Lord  Dunsany,  was  published  unobtrusively  in  The 
Modern  Drama  Series,  with  an  introduction  by  Mr. 
Edwin  Bjorkman.  Until  that  time,  the  name  of  Lord 
Dunsany  had  hardly  been  heard  of  in  this  country, 
although  he  had  previously  published,  on  the  other  side 
of  the  Atlantic,  five  volumes  of  imaginative  prose, — 
The  Gods  of  Pegana  [1905],  Time  and  the  Gods 
[1906],  The  Sword  of  Welleran  [1908],  A  Dreamer's 
Tales  [1910],  and  The  Book  of  Wonder  [1912].  Since 
then,  however,  four  of  these  five  plays,  and  three  other 
plays  which  have  been  written  subsequently,  have  been 
afforded  public  presentations  in  this  country;  and,  in 
the  first  week  of  December,  1916,  it  was  possible  to  see 
no  less  than  three  of  them  professionally  acted  in  New 
York. 

This  astonishing  success  in  a  country  where  the 
theatre  still  remains  excessively  commercialized  is  all 
the  more  remarkable  because  the  author  has  never  made 
the  slightest  effort  to  attain  success  in  the  commercial 
theatre.  His  first  play,  The  Glittering  Gate,  was  writ- 
ten in  1909  for  the  Abbey  Theatre  Players  at  the 

175 


176     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

request  of  Mr.  William  Butler  Yeats.  His  other  plays 
have  been  written,  at  convenient  intervals,  to  please  no 
other  person  than  himself.  Lord  Dunsany  has  never 
enjoyed,  or  suffered,  any  personal  connection  with  the 
theatre  of  his  day,  either  in  London  or  in  Dublin  or  in 
any  other  city.  He  has  never  asked  a  manager  to  pro- 
duce a  play  of  his.  He  has  never  even  met  the  mighty 
magnates  who  control  the  theatre  in  England  and 
America.  Yet  all  his  plays  have  been  acted ;  and, 
wherever  they  have  been  produced,  they  have  been 
greeted  with  golden  encomiums  from  the  critics  and  the 
public.  Without  the  slightest  effort  on  his  own  part  to 
exploit  his  wares,  without  even  any  knowledge  of  the 
eager  interest  that  he  has  stirred  up  in  America  [for  the 
man  is  very  busy  elsewhere  in  the  world],  Lord  Dun- 
sany, in  the  first  week  of  December,  1916,  was  more 
talked  about  than  any  other  playwright  in  commercial- 
ized New  York.  The  moral  of  this  simple  fact  is  merely 
this : — that  merit  counts,  and  that  it  is  better  for  a 
dramatist  to  retire  to  a  far  place  and  write  a  great 
play  than  to  hang  about  Times  Square  and  dramatize 
the  views  of  all  the  mighty  managers  concerning  "  what 
the  public  wants."  In  the  theatre,  as  in  life  itself,  there 
is  alwaj's  room  at  the  top;  and,  if  a  man  can  write 
so  great  a  play  as  The  Gods  of  the  Mountain  or  A 
Night  at  an  Inn,  he  need  not  even  make  an  effort  to 
secure  a  hearing.  All  the  ears  of  the  world  will  yearn 
instinctively  in  the  direction  of  his  eloquence  until  it 
shall  burst  forth  by  invitation  and  fill  the  theatre  with 
a  sound  like  thunder  or  the  noise  of  seven  seas. 

Of   this   mysterious   and  mighty   warrior,   who   has 


THE  PLAYS  OF  LORD  DUNSANY      177 

broken  into  our  commercial  theatre  by  assault,  without 
so  much  as  marshaling  his  forces  to  win  a  fight  in  which 
so  many  other  men  have  failed,  very  little  news  has  come 
to  us  except  such  information  as  may  be  gleaned  from 
personal  letters  to  half  a  dozen  correspondents  in  this 
country.  Mr.  Bjorkman  has  summarized  the  entire 
career  of  this  admired  author  in  six  sentences  which 
may  be  quoted  now : 

"  Edward  John  Moreton  Drax  Plunkett,  Lord  Dunsany, 
is  the  eighteenth  member  of  his  family  to  bear  the  title 
which  gives  him  a  place  in  the  Irish  peerage.  He  was  born 
in  1878  and  received  his  education  at  Eton  and  Sandhurst. 
In  1899  he  succeeded  his  father  to  the  title  and  the  family 
estate  in  Meath,  Ireland.  During  the  South  African  war 
he  served  at  the  front  with  the  Coldstream  Guards.  He 
is  passionately  fond  of  outdoor  life  and  often  spends  the 
whole  day  in  the  saddle  before  sitting  down  at  his  desk 
to  write  late  at  night.  His  work  proves,  however,  that 
he  is  as  fond  of  spiritual  as  of  physical  exercise,  and  that 
he  is  an  inveterate  traveler  in  those  mysterious  regions 
of  the  partly  known  or  wholly  unknown  where  the  imagina- 
tion alone  can  guide  us." 

To  this  somewhat  meager  chronicle  a  few  facts  may 
now  be  added.  At  the  outbreak  of  the  great  war,  Lord 
Dunsany  was  not  sent  immediately  to  the  front  with 
the  expeditionary  forces.  Because  of  his  experience 
under  fire,  he  was  retained  in  England  to  help  in  the 
gigantic  task  of  training  the  raw  recruits  of  Kitchener's 
army.  Meanwhile,  he  wrote  to  two  or  three  people  in 
this  country  that,  if  he  happened  to  emerge  from  the 
war  alive,  his  first  act,  after  peace  had  been  recon- 


178     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

quered,  would  be  to  visit  the  United  States,  for  a  physi- 
cal and  spiritual  renovation. 

Lord  Dunsany  was  wounded  in  the  Dublin  riots; 
and,  when  last  heard  from  in  1916,  he  was  waiting  at 
Londonderry  barracks  to  be  released  by  the  medical 
board  and  sent  to  the  front  in  France.  He  seemed  then 
to  suffer  from  a  premonition  that  he  would  not  survive 
the  war.  In  a  letter  to  Mrs.  Emma  Garrett  Boyd,  a 
popular  lecturer  who  has  done  a  great  deal  to  propa- 
gate the  fame  of  Lord  Dunsany  in  this  country,  he 
said : — "  If  I  do  not  live  to  come  to  America,  there  is 
none  who  can  tell  you  more  about  me  nor  with  better 
understanding  than  my  wife.  I  was  wounded  less  than 
three  weeks  ago.  The  bullet  has  been  extracted  and  I 
am  healing  up  rapidly.  I  am  also  under  orders  for 
France  as  soon  as  I  have  recovered.  Sometimes  I  think 
that  no  man  is  taken  hence  until  he  has  done  the  work 
that  he  is  here  to  do,  and  looking  back  on  five  battles 
and  other  escapes  from  death  this  theory  seems  almost 
plausible ;  but  how  can  one  hold  it  when  one  thinks  of 
the  deaths  of  Shelley  and  Keats  ?  " 

This  is  all  that,  even  now,  on  this  side  of  the  ocean, 
is  positively  known  of  the  personal  career  of  a  man, 
still  under  forty,  who  has  written  at  least  two  of  the 
greatest  plays  of  modern  times.  Lord  Dunsany  may 
be  killed  to-morrow, — "  somewhere  in  France  " — a  land 
that  all  of  us  would  gladly  die  for;  or,  after  certain 
months  and  years,  he  may  appear  to  us  in  khaki,  smil- 
ing, with  a  weariness  about  his  lips  but  with  a  glory 
in  his  eyes.  In  either  case,  the  mere  fact  does  not  mat- 
ter. He  is  one  with  Shelley  and  with  Keats.  He  has 


THE  PLAYS  OF  LORD  DUNSANY      179 

done  enough  already  to  secure  meticulous  attention  from 
the  extra  clerks  that  have  been  hired,  of  necessity  in 
these  over-busy  years,  by  the  Recording  Angel.  He  has 
written  more  than  half  a  dozen  plays  that  have  touched 
his  fellow-dramatists  to  tears  and  have  caused  them  to 
rise  up  like  gentlemen  and  cheer  his  name;  and  he  may 
live  or  die  in  peace.  His  work,  although  unfinished, 
is  complete ;  his  pla3rs  may  be  examined,  one  by  one, 
in  chronological  succession ;  and,  after  that,  some  effort 
may  be  made  to  estimate  his  message  and  approximate 
a  judgment  of  his  standing  in  the  theatre  of  the  world. 

ii 

The  definitive  point  should  be  considered  at  the  very 
outset  that  all  of  the  dramatic  works  of  Lord  Dunsany 
are  one-act  plays.  The  student  should  not  be  led  astray 
by  the  unimportant  fact  that,  in  the  published  text  of 
The  Gods  of  the  Mountain,  the  three  successive  scenes 
are  headed  by  the  captions,  "  The  First  Act,"  "  The 
Second  Act,"  and  "  The  Third  Act."  Neither  should 
the  reader  be  deceived  by  the  accident  that  the  pub- 
lished text  of  King  Argimenes  and  the  Unknown  War- 
rior is  divided  into  two  parts  which  are  denominated 
"  The  First  Act  "  and  "  The  Second  Act." 

The  purpose  of  a  one-act  play  is  to  produce  a  single 
dramatic  effect  with  the  greatest  economy  of  means  that 
is  consistent  with  the  utmost  emphasis ;  and,  in  all 
the  compositions  now  before  us,  this  purpose  has  been 
carefully  maintained.  Considered  technically,  The 
Gods  of  the  Mountain  is  a  one-act  play  in  three  suc- 
cessive scenes ;  and,  in  production,  these  scenes  should 


180     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

be  hurriedly  disclosed  upon  the  stage  without  any  inter- 
mission. In  King  Argimenes  also,  the  two  scenes  should 
be  presented  without  any  intermediary  lapse  of  time, 
since  they  exhibit  two  projections  of  the  same  idea, — 
as  if  the  dramatist  should  say,  "  Look  now  upon  this 
picture,  and  on  this  !  " 

Lord  Dunsany  is  as  exclusively  an  artist  in  the  one- 
act  play  as  Edgar  Allan  Poe  was  an  artist  in  the  short- 
story.  The  strong  point,  with  both  of  these  technicians, 
is  the  intensity  with  which  they  are  able  to  focus  the 
imagination  on  a  single  definite  and  little  project  of  the 
panorama  of  experience.  Each  of  them  is  willing  to 
sacrifice  in  range  what  he  is  able  to  gain  in  terrible 
intensity.  Poe  was  not  a  novelist;  and  Lord  Dunsany 
has  still  to  prove  that  he  can  write  successfully  a  three- 
or  four-act  play.  Both  men  can  seize  a  big  idea  and  see 
it  steadily;  but  this  is  a  very  different  endeavor  from 
seizing  a  great  handful  of  experience  and  trying  hard 
to  see  it  whole. 


"  THE   GLITTERING   GATE  "    [1909] 

In  The  Glittering  Gate,  we  are  wafted  to  a  Lonely 
Place,  which  shows  the  golden  Gate  of  Heaven  in  a 
granite  wall  of  great  slabs  that  overhangs  an  abyss 
hung  with  stars.  There  are  only  two  actors,  Jim  and 
Bill,  both  burglars,  and  both  lately  dead.  Jim  has  been 
dead  several  months  and  has  spent  this  time  in  opening 
innumerable  beer-bottles  which  appear,  as  if  by  miracle, 
about  him,  and  which  turn  out,  one  after  another,  to  be 
empty.  He  has  grown  accustomed  to  the  grim,  sar- 


THE  PLAYS  OF  LORD  DUNSANY      181 

donic  Laughter  of  the  Gods  and  has  forgot  the  world. 
Bill  joins  him,  freshly  killed,  remembering  the  yearnings 
of  the  life  that  used  to  be.  Bill  has  brought  along  with 
him  the  "  nut-cracker  "  that  he  had  held  in  his  hand  at 
the  moment  when  he  was  shot  by  a  householder  whose 
premises  he  had  invaded.  Bill  endeavors  to  drill  open 
with  his  "  nut-cracker "  the  golden  Gate  of  Heaven. 
Jim — the  tired  soul — is  little  interested,  until  the  gold 
of  the  great  gate  begins  to  yield  like  cheese.  Then  both 
of  these  dead  burglars  give  their  minds  up  to  imagining 
the  glorious  immensity  of  Heaven.  Bill's  mother  will 
be  there,  and  also  a  girl  with  yellow  hair  whom  Jim 
remembers  dimly  behind  a  bar  at  Wimbledon.  Slowly 
the  great  gate  swings  open,  "  revealing  empty  night 
and  stars."  Bill,  "  staggering  and  gazing  into  the  re- 
vealed Nothing,  in  which  far  stars  go  wandering," 
says, — "  Stars.  Blooming  great  stars.  There  ain't  no 
Heaven,  Jim."  A  cruel  and  violent  laughter  is  heard 
off-stage.  As  it  grows  louder  and  more  sardonic,  Jim 
replies, — "  That's  like  them.  That's  very  like  them. 
Yes,  they'd  do  that ! "  And,  as  the  curtain  falls,  the 
laughter  still  howls  on. 

"KING  ARGIMENES  AND  THE  UNKNOWN  WARRIOR" 
[1911] 

King  Argimenes  and  the  Unknown  Warrior  is,  per- 
haps, the  least  impressive  of  the  plays  of  Lord  Dun- 
sany.  King  Argimenes  has  been  conquered  and  enslaved 
by  King  Darniak ;  and  we  meet  the  hero  suffering  from 
hunger  in  the  slave-fields  of  his  conqueror.  In  passing, 


182     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

it  may  be  interesting  to  note  that  the  picture  of  hunger 
here  presented  was  drawn  from  the  author's  memory  of 
certain  days  in  South  Africa  when  Lord  Dunsany  and 
his  soldiers  sat  hungry  on  the  ground. 

King  Argimenes,  digging  in  the  earth,  discovers  the 
buried  sword  of  some  Unknown  Warrior.  The  posses- 
sion of  this  sword  gives  him  courage  to  command.  He 
slays,  one  by  one,  the  six  guards  of  the  slave-fields,  and 
arms  with  their  weapons  six  of  his  fellow-slaves.  Then 
he  storms  the  armory  of  King  Darniak  and  overturns 
the  image  of  the  God  Illuriel.  This  play,  which  ap- 
pears to  be  an  allegory  of  the  sense  of  power  which  is 
given  to  a  man  when  he  becomes  possessed  of  the  sym- 
bols of  dominion,  is  effectively  theatrical ;  but  the  out- 
come seems  less  inevitable  than  that  of  Lord  Dunsany's 
other  plays. 

"THE  GODS  OF  THE  MOUNTAIN"  [1911] 

We  come  now  to  consider  the  greatest,  if  not  the 
most  effective,  play  of  Lord  Dunsany,  The  Gods  of  the 
Mountain.  This  piece  was  first  produced  at  the  Hay- 
market  Theatre  in  London.  Mr.  Austin  Strong,  who 
saw  and  remembered  this  impressive  presentation,  was 
the  stage-director  of  the  first  important  production  in 
America,  which  was  shown  behind  closed  doors  by  the 
Amateur  Comedy  Club  of  New  York  City  in  the  fall 
of  1915.  This  production  in  every  respect  was  mas- 
terly ;  and  all  who  saw  it  will  remember  the  occasion  with 
credit  to  Mr.  Strong  and  to  the  many  other  members  of 
the  Amateur  Comedy  Club  who  helped  him  to  achieve  a 
great  projection  of  a  great  play.  The  subsequent 


THE  PLAYS  OF  LORD  DUNSANY      183 

professional  production  by  Mr.  Stuart  Walker,  of  the 
Portmanteau  Theatre,  was  inferior  to  that  of  the 
Amateur  Comedy  Club,  because  the  spacious  grandeur 
of  the  play  was  inevitably  dwarfed  by  the  diminutive 
proportions  of  the  Portmanteau  stage.  But  even  a 
second-rate  production  of  this  masterpece  is  more  im- 
pressive than  a  first-rate  production  of  nearly  any 
other  play  by  any  other  modern  author. 

Three  beggars  are  discovered,  seated  on  the  ground 
outside  a  city  wall,  lamenting  that  the  days  are  bad  for 
beggary.  To  them  appears  the  super-beggar  Agmar, 
from  another  city,  accompanied  by  a  faithful  servant, 
Slag.  Slag  asserts  that  his  master  is  a  man  of  big  ideas 
and  that  he  has  come  to  captivate  the  city  by  his  cun- 
ning. Agmar  sends  a  thief  into  the  town  to  steal  green 
raiment,  and  explains  to  the  beggars  that  they  will 
enter  the  city  as  gods, — the  seven  gods  that  are  carved 
from  green  stone  in  the  mountains  of  Marma.  "  They 
sit  all  seven  of  them  against  the  hills.  They  sit  there 
motionless  and  travelers  worship  them.  They  are  of 
green  jade.  They  sit  cross-legged  with  their  right 
elbows  resting  on  their  left  hands,  the  right  forefinger 
pointing  upward.  We  will  come  into  the  city  disguised, 
from  the  direction  of  Marma,  and  will  claim  to  be  these 
gods.  We  must  be  seven  as  they  are.  And  when  we 
sit  we  must  sit  cross-legged  as  they  do,  with  the  right 
hand  uplifted." 

When  the  thief  returns,  with  green  garments,  the 
other  beggars  wish  to  put  them  on  over  their  rags ;  but 
Agmar  has  a  subtler  plan.  They  must  not  look  like 
beggars  disguised  as  gods ;  they  must  look  like  gods 


184     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

disguised  as  beggars.  He  tears  the  green  garments  into 
strips  and  makes  each  beggar  don  a  shred  beneath  his 
rags  so  that  the  green  shall  show  through  only  casually. 
Thus  arrayed,  the  beggars  enter  the  city  of  Kongros, 
and  sit  cross-legged  in  the  Metropolitan  Hall,  in  the 
attitude  of  the  gods  of  the  mountain. 

Agmar  has  caused  a  prophecy  to  be  bruited  abroad  in 
the  market-place  that  the  gods  who  are  carven  from 
green  rock  in  the  mountain  shall  one  day  arise  in 
Marma  and  come  to  Kongros  in  the  guise  of  men. 
Many  citizens  now  gather  in  the  Metropolitan  Hall  and 
wonder  if  these  seven  are  indeed  the  gods  of  Marma. 
Agmar  never  actually  tells  them  that  his  men  are  gods ; 
but  he  threatens  them  with  dire  penalties  if  they  doubt 
revealed  divinity.  A  sacrifice  of  food  and  drink  is 
brought,  with  due  obeisance.  The  other  beggars  eat 
hungrily;  but  Agmar  refuses  food  and  pours  out  a 
precious  bowl  of  Woldery  Wine,  as  a  libation,  on  the 
ground.  By  this  abstention  he  assures  the  citizens  of 
his  divinity;  and  the  seven  beggars  are  enthroned  as 
gods. 

But  still  there  are  citizens  who  doubt;  and  these 
doubters  send  two  dromedary  men  to  go  to  the  moun- 
tains of  Marma  and  see  if  the  carven  gods  have  actu- 
ally left  their  places  on  the  mountain-side.  Agmar  and 
his  men  are  filled  with  fright  when  they  learn  of  this 
expedition ;  and  they  are  all  the  more  astounded  when 
the  dromedary  men  return  with  the  report  that  Agmar 
and  his  followers  must  be  indeed  the  gods,  since  the 
ancient  idols  were  no  longer  to  be  seen  in  their  moun- 
tain-seat at  Marma.  Then  a  frightened  messenger 


THE  PLAYS  OF  LORD  DUNSANY      185 

appears,  falls  prostrate  at  the  feet  of  the  seven  beg1 
gars,  and  implores  them  not  again  to  wander  in  the 
evening,  as  they  walked  the  night  before,  on  the  edge 
of  the  desert,  terrible  in  the  gloaming,  with  hands 
stretched  out  and  groping,  feeling  for  the  city.  "  Mas- 
ter," cries  the  messenger  to  Agmar,  "  we  can  bear  to 
see  you  in  the  flesh  like  men,  but  when  we  see  rock 
walking  it  is  terrible,  it  is  terrible.  Rock  should  not 
walk.  When  children  see  it  they  do  not  understand. 
Rock  should  not  walk  in  the  evening." 

When  this  cringing  messenger  has  crept  away;  Ulf, 
the  oldest  of  the  beggars,  cries  aloud,  "  I  have  a  fear, 
an  old  fear  and  a  boding.  We  have  done  ill  in  the  siglit 
of  the  seven  gods.  Beggars  we  were  and  beggars  we 
should  have  remained.  We  have  given  up  our  calling 
and  come  in  sight  of  our  doom.  I  will  no  longer  let 
my  fear  be  silent;  it  shall  run  about  and  cry;  it  shall 
go  from  me  crying,  like  a  dog  from  out  of  a  doomed 
city ;  for  my  fear  has  seen  calamity  and  has  known 
an  evil  thing." 

Then,  off-stage,  amid  a  horror  of  great  silence,  is 
heard  the  headlong  heavy  tramp  of  stony  feet.  The 
seven  gods  of  Marma,  carved  of  jade,  stalk  lumbering 
upon  the  stage.  The  leading  Green  Thing  points  a 
stony  finger  at  each  of  the  seven  beggars,  one  by  one. 
"  As  he  does  this,  each  beggar  in  his  turn  gathers  him- 
self back  on  to  his  throne  and  crosses  his  legs,  his  right 
arm  goes  stiffly  upward  with  forefinger  erect,  and  a 
staring  look  of  horror  comes  into  his  eyes.  In  this 
attitude  the  beggars  sit  motionless,  while  a  green  light 
falls  upon  their  faces." 


The  gods  go  out.  The  citizens  return.  They  find  the 
seven  beggars  turned  to  stone.  "  We  have  doubted 
them,"  they  cry.  "  They  have  turned  to  stone  because 
we  have  doubted  them."  Then,  in  a  great  and  growing 
voice,  there  comes  a  chorus,  "  They  were  the  true  gods. 
They  were  the  true  gods."  It  is  thus  that  big  religions 
are  begun.  The  faithful  soul  invents  the  faith  it 
feeds  on. 

To  this  simple  and  straightforward  narrative, — so 
terrible,  so  beautiful,  so  true,  so  absolutely  self-suffi- 
cient,— many  critics  have  applied  the  academic  adjec- 
tives "  symbolical  "  and  "  allegorical."  With  criticism 
of  this  sort,  the  author  is  exceedingly  impatient.  In  a 
letter  to  Mrs.  Emma  Garrett  Boyd,  Lord  Dunsany  has 
said : — "  In  case  I  shall  not  live  to  explain  my  work,  I 
think  the  first  thing  to  tell  them  [the  American  people] 
is  that  it  does  not  need  explanation.  One  does  not  need 
to  explain  a  sunset,  nor  does  one  need  to  explain  a 
work  of  art. 

"  Don't  let  them  hunt  for  allegories.  I  may  have 
written  an  allegory  at  some  time,  but  if  I  have,  it  was 
a  quite  obvious  one,  and,  as  a  general  rule,  I  have  noth- 
ing to  do  with  allegories. 

"  What  is  an  allegory?  A  man  wants  the  streets  to  be 
swept  better  in  his  town  or  he  wants  his  neighbors  to  have 
rather  cleaner  morals.  He  can't  say  so  straight  out 
because  he  might  be  had  up  for  libel,  so  he  says  what  he 
has  to  say,  but  he  says  it  about  some  extinct  king  in 
Babylon,  but  he's  thinking  of  his  one-horse  town  all  the 
time.  Now,  when  I  write  of  Babylon,  there  are  people 
who  cannot  see  that  I  write  of  it  for  love  of  Babylon's 


THE  PLAYS  OF  LORD  DUNSANY      187 

ways,  and  they  think  I'm  thinking  of  London  still  and 
our  beastly  Parliament. 

"  Only  I  get  further  east  than  Babylon,  even  to 
kingdoms  that  seem  to  me  to  lie  in  the  twilight  beyond 
the  East  of  the  World.  I  want  to  write  about  men  and 
women  and  the  great  forces  that  have  been  with  them 
from  the  cradle  up — forces  that  the  centuries  have 
neither  aged  nor  weakened — not  about  people  who  are 
so  interested  in  the  latest  mascot  or  motor  that  not 
enough  remains  when  the  trivial  is  sifted  from 
them.  .  .  . 

"  Take  my  Gods  of  the  Mountain.  Some  beggars 
being  hard  up  pretend  to  be  gods.  Then  they  get  all 
they  want.  But  Destiny,  Nemesis,  the  Gods,  punish 
them  by  turning  them  into  the  very  idols  that  they  de- 
sired to  be. 

"  First  of  all  there  you  have  a  very  simple  tale  told 
dramatically,  and  along  with  that  you  have  bound, 
without  any  deliberate  attempt  of  mine — so  far  as  I 
know — a  truth,  not  true  to  London  only  or  to  New 
York  or  to  one  municipal  party,  but  to  the  experience 
of  man.  That  is  the  kind  of  way  that  man  does  get  hit 
by  destiny.  But  mind  you,  that  is  all  unconscious 
though  inevitable.  I  am  not  trying  to  teach  anybody 
anything.  I  merely  set  out  to  make  a  good  work  of  art 
from  a  simple  theme,  and  God  knows  we  want  works 
of  art  in  this  age  of  corrugated  iron.  How  many  peo- 
ple hold  the  error  that  Shakespeare  was  of  the  school- 
room !  Whereas  he  was  of  the  playground,  as  all  artists 
are." 


188     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

"  THE  GOLDEN  DOOM  "   [1912] 

In  The  Golden  Doom,  the  playful  aspiration  of  a 
little  boy  becomes  inextricably  intertangled  with  the 
destiny  of  a  mighty  monarch.  The  piece  is  set  "  out- 
side the  King's  great  door  in  Zericon,  some  while  before 
the  fall  of  Babylon": — and  the  reading  of  this  simple 
stage-direction  fills  the  ear  with  singing  like  that 
which  Ibsen's  Hilda  heard  in  those  inspired  mo- 
ments when  she  hearkened  to  the  music  of  harps 
in  the  air. 

This  little  boy  comes  to  beg  the  King  of  Zericon  for 
a  hoop  to  play  with ;  and,  in  the  absence  of  the  monarch, 
he  addresses  his  petition  to  the  King's  great  door, — a 
sacred  door,  which  it  is  death  to  touch.  When  the  sen- 
tries are  not  looking,  this  unthinking  boy  scrawls  upon 
the  iron  door  a  little  doggerel  poem  that  is  running  in 
his  mind, — using  as  a  pencil  a  nugget  of  gold  which 
he  has  fished  up  from  the  river  near  at  hand. 

This  golden  legend  on  the  iron  door  is  subsequently 
found  and  regarded  as  a  portent.  The  King's  great 
prophets  are  summoned  to  intrepret  it.  They  read  it  as 
a  doom  from  the  stars.  The  King's  pride  has  been  too 
overweening,  and  he  is  marked  for  ruin.  Therefore  the 
King,  to  symbolize  the  sacrifice  of  all  his  pride,  lays 
his  crown  and  scepter  humbly  before  the  iron  door  and 
goes  away  bare-headed.  The  little  boy  comes  back. 
His  prayer  to  the  King's  door  has  apparently  been 
answered.  He  regards  the  King's  crown  as  a  hoop, 
and  the  scepter  as  a  stick  to  beat  it  with ;  and  he  frisks 
away,  delighted  with  his  toys.  When  the  King  returns, 


THE  PLAYS  OF  LORD  DUNSANY      189 

his  sacrificial  offerings  have  disappeared.     "  The  gods 
have  come,"  he  says.     "  The  stars  are  satisfied." 


"  THE   LOST   SILK   HAT  "    [1913] 

The  Lost  Silk  Hat  has  not  as  yet  been  acted  in  New 
York;  but  it  has  been  produced  by  Mr.  B.  Iden  Payne 
at  the  Gaiety  Theatre  in  Manchester  and  by  Mr.  Sam 
Hume  at  the  Arts  and  Crafts  Theatre  in  Detroit.  It  is 
written  in  a  lighter  vein  than  the  other  plays  of  Lord 
Dunsany.  Before  a  house  in  London,  a  young  gentle- 
man, "  faultlessly  dressed,  but  without  a  hat,"  is  stand- 
ing, in  a  most  embarrassing  predicament.  He  has  just 
said  farewell  forever  to  the  young  lady  in  the  house ; 
but,  in  accomplishing  his  tragic  exit,  he  has  left  his  top- 
hat  in  the  drawing-room,  "  half  under  the  long  sofa, 
at  the  far  end."  Being  a  conventional  young  man,  he 
cannot  confront  with  equanimity  the  prospect  of  wan- 
dering about  the  streets  of  London  without  a  hat. 

A  laborer,  a  clerk,  a  poet,  stroll  successively  along 
the  street.  The  young  gentleman  implores  each  of  these 
in  turn  to  ring  the  bell  and  to  invent  some  subterfuge 
for  recovering  his  hat.  The  laborer  and  the  clerk 
regard  him  as  insane  and  go  their  ways ;  but  the  poet 
lingers  long  enough  to  talk  the  matter  over  with  him. 
The  upshot  of  their  conversation  is  that  the  young 
man  eventually  reenters  the  house,  against  the  protests 
of  the  poet,  who  pleads  that  it  would  be  much  more 
fittingly  romantic  for  the  young  man  to  go  away  to 
Africa  and  die;  and  that  the  young  man,  having  been 
enticed  once  more  within  the  dangerous  precincts  by  the 


190     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

mere  desire  to  recover  his  top-hat,  nevermore  returns 
from  the  toils  of  the  young  lady,  to  whom,  once,  in  a 
dramatic  moment,  he  had  said  farewell  forever. 


"  THE    TENTS    OF    THE    ARABS "    [1915] 

The  Tents  of  the  Arabs  was  printed  in  the  Smart  Set 
for  March,  1915,  and  was  acted  for  the  first  time  on  any 
stage  at  the  Arts  and  Crafts  Theatre  in  Detroit, 
Michigan,  on  November  16,  1916,  under  the  direction  of 
Mr.  Sam  Hume. 

The  Tents  of  the  Arabs  is  perhaps  the  least  theatri- 
cal of  Lord  Dunsany's  plays,  but  it  is  also  the  most 
lyrical  in  mood.  It  tells  a  very  simple  story  of  a  camel- 
driver  who  wanted  to  be  a  king  and  a  king  who  wanted 
to  be  a  camel-driver,  and  how,  because  they  had  the  luck 
to  look  sufficiently  alike,  they  managed  to  change  places 
in  the  world,  so  that  each  of  them  could  be  happy  in  the 
life  of  which  the  other  had  grown  weary.  There  is  no 
other  mood  more  lyrical  than  that  of  longing — as 
Edgar  Allan  Poe  pointed  out  in  one  of  his  acutest 
passages  of  philosophic  criticism;  and  the  longing  of 
this  fabled  king  who  is  weary  of  cities  and  desires  ever- 
more to  wander  over  the  illimitable  desert  is  expressed 
by  Lord  Dunsany  with  incomparable  eloquence.  Thus, 
for  instance,  speaks  the  king:  "  O  Thalanna,  Thalanna, 
how  I  hate  this  city  with  its  narrow,  narrow  ways,  and 
evening  after  evening  drunken  men  playing  skabash  in 
the  scandalous  gambling  house  of  that  old  scoundrel 
Skarmi.  O  that  I  might  marry  the  child  of  some  un- 
kingly  house  that  generation  to  generation  had  never 


THE  PLAYS  OF  LORD  DUNSANY      191 

known  a  city,  and  that  we  might  ride  from  here  down 
the  long  track  through  the  desert,  always  we  two  alone, 
till  we  came  to  the  tents  of  the  Arabs.  And  the  crown — 
some  foolish,  greedy  man  should  be  given  it  to  his  sor- 
row. And  all  this  may  not  be,  for  a  King  is  yet  a 
King." 

"A    NIGHT    AT    AN    INN5'    [1916] 

On  the  night  of  April  22,  1916,  three  hundred  people 
were  gathered  at  the  Neighborhood  Playhouse,  at  466 
Grand  Street,  New  York  City,  to  attend  the  first  per- 
formance on  any  stage  anywhere  in  the  world  of  a  new 
and  theretofore  unpublished  play  by  Lord  Dunsany, 
entitled  A  Night  at  an  Inn.  The  audience  which 
crowded  the  Neighborhood  Playhouse  on  this  particular 
evening  included  less  than  half  a  dozen  of  those  who,  by 
professional  connection,  might  have  been  expected  to 
respond  to  the  privilege  of  the  occasion.  Yet,  when  this 
great  play  by  a  great  man  was  presented  by  the  local 
company  of  Grand  Street,  it  reached  out  and  grabbed 
the  casual  auditors  by  the  throat,  and  shook  them,  and 
thrilled  them,  and  reduced  them  to  a  mood  of  inarticu- 
late laudation. 

To  those  of  us  who  were  present  on  that  memorable 
evening,  it  appeared  that  A  Night  at  an  Inn  was  the 
most  effective  one-act  play  that  we  had  ever  seen.  In 
the  colder  light  of  after-thinking,  there  seems  to  be  no 
need  to  revise  this  judgment,  except  so  far  as  to  admit 
a  reasonable  rivalry  on  the  part  of  The  Gods  of  the 
Mountain,  by  the  same  author,  and  Riders  to  the  Sea, 
by  the  dead  but  deathless  poet,  John  M.  Synge.  One 


192      PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

of  these  three  is,  assuredly,  the  greatest  one-act  play 
in  the  world ;  and  the  present  writer  will  not  quarrel 
with  the  choice  of  any  critic  for  a  verdict  of  uttermost 
supremacy  among  these  three. 

To  tell  in  detail  the  story  of  A  Night  at  an  Inn 
would  seem  like  the  betrayal  of  a  trust.  Basically, 
this  one-act  play  is  nothing  more  than  a  melodrama  of 
the  "  shilling-shocker  "  sort ;  but  it  is  so  irradiated  with 
imagination  that  the  terrible  theatric  thrill  of  the  im- 
mediate performance  is  survived  by  a  memory  that 
serenely  satisfies  the  soul.  The  theme  of  A  Night  at  an 
Inn  is  identical  with  that  of  The  Gods  of  the  Mountain; 
but  the  later  play  is  more  terribly  immediate  in  the 
medium  of  its  appeal.  Though  a  romantic  work,  it  has 
a  realistic  setting;  and  the  imaginative  horror  of  the 
narrative  is  brought  so  close  to  the  audience  that  the 
action  is  accompanied  by  audible  gasps  and  groans 
and  a  nervous  gripping  of  the  arms  of  all  the  chairs. 
To  write  a  more  effective  play  than  this  would  seem, 
in  fact,  to  be  impossible.  A  Night  at  an  Inn,  indeed, 
might  be  accepted  without  discussion  as  an  answer  to 
the  academic  questions,  "What  is  a  play?"  and 
"  What  is,  after  all,  dramatic?  " 

"  THE  QUEEN'S  ENEMIES  "  [1916] 

The  Queen's  Enemies  was  first  produced  at  the 
Neighborhood  Playhouse,  in  New  York,  on  November 
14,  1916.  It  shows  the  author  only  at  his  second  best ; 
but  the  second  best  of  such  a  man  is  better  than  the 
very  best  of  most  of  our  contemporary  dramatists. 


THE  PLAYS  OF  LORD  DUNSANY      193 

The  story  is  a  little  reminiscent  of  The  Cask  of 
Amontillado,  by  Edgar  Allan  Poe, — an  author  whom 
Dunsany  much  resembles.  A  little  Queen  of  ancient 
Egypt  is  annoyed  by  the  fact  that  she  has  so  many 
enemies.  Therefore  she  invites  them  all  to  a  banquet 
in  an  underground  temple  that  is  sacred  to  the  Nile. 
They  come — these  mighty  warriors — armed  to  the 
teeth,  and  accompanied  by  their  retainers.  The  little 
Queen  of  Egypt  is  unarmed,  and  is  accompanied  only 
by  a  weakling  female  slave.  She  invites  her  guests  to 
eat,  to  drink,  and  to  be  merry.  The  hostile  warriors 
suspect  the  food,  and  feed  it  first  to  their  subjacent 
slaves.  They  suspect  the  wine  as  well,  and  sedulously 
watch  its  effect  upon  their  underlings.  But  the  little 
Queen  disarms  their  fear  of  being  poisoned  by  partak- 
ing eagerly  and  freely  of  the  proffered  food  and  drink. 
The  banquet  begins  to  be  successful.  Light  talk  flows 
merrily  around  the  board.  Meanwhile,  the  Queen  of 
Egypt  and  her  attendant  female  slave  edge  their  way 
gradually  toward  the  only  door.  They  make  this  door, 
dash  through  it,  slam  and  bar  it.  Then  the  little,  help- 
less Queen  prays  to  the  great  god  of  the  Nile.  The 
river  rises,  and  pours  through  a  grating  in  the  wall  of 
the  underground  temple.  In  utter  darkness,  we  hear 
the  gurgles  and  gasps  that  mark  the  drowning  of  the 
incarcerated  enemies  of  the  little  Queen.  Then  a  sud- 
den torch  appears  upon  the  outer  stairs.  The  Queen 
ascends  serenely  to  the  upper  air.  She  has  no  enemies 
any  more ;  and  she  will  sleep  in  peace. 


194     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

m 

That  these  eight  one-act  plays  of  Lord  Dunsany  are 
great  works,  no  reader  or  observer  will  readily  deny. 
There  remains  only  for  the  critic  the  cold  task  of  point- 
ing out  the  various  influences  that  have  contributed, 
more  or  less,  to  their  creation.  Lord  Dunsany  is  one 
of  the  most  original  dramatists  of  modern  times.  In  an 
age  of  realism,  he  has  dared  to  blow  a  brazen  trumpet 
in  celebration  of  the  ceaseless  triumph  of  romance.  In 
a  period  when  the  majority  of  minds  have  worked  induc- 
tively, he  has  dared  to  think  deductively.  He  has  in- 
vented facts  to  illustrate  a  central  truth,  instead  of 
imitating  actuality  in  a  faint  and  far-off  effort  to 
suggest  the  underlying  essence  of  reality.  He  has 
imagined  and  realized  a  world  "  some  while  before  the 
fall  of  Babylon  "  which  is  more  meaningful  in  utter 
truth  than  the  little  world  that  is  revealed  to  the  ob- 
server of  a  Harlem  flat  or  of  a  hired  room  in  Houston 
Street  at  the  present  hour. 

But  no  artist,  however  original,  is  entirely  devoid  of 
predecessors.  Lord  Dunsany  has  derived  his  inspira- 
tion from  Sophocles,  from  Maeterlinck,  from  the  Eng- 
lish Bible,  and  from  John  M.  Synge.  From  Sophocles 
he  takes  the  theme  that  forever  tantalizes  and  invites 
his  genius.  This  theme  is  the  inevitable  overcoming  of 
the  sin  of  pride,  or  hubris,  by  the  primal  power  of 
anarike,  or  necessity.  Like  the  ancient  Greeks,  Dun- 
sany loves  to  show  the  tragic  failing  of  a  hero  who  has 
set  his  wits  against  the  power  of  the  God  that  rules  the 
gods.  In  his  greatest  plays,  he  projects  upon  the  stage 


THE  PLAYS  OF  LORD  DUNSANY      195 

a  conflict  between  a  super-man  and  a  sort  of  idealized 
abstraction  that  may  conveniently  be  called  a  super- 
god.  In  this  conflict,  the  eternal  law  inevitably  con- 
quers the  temporal  rebellion.  In  this  reading  of  the 
evermore  recurrent  riddle  of  destiny,  Lord  Dunsany 
agrees  with  ^Eschylus,  with  Sophocles,  and  with  Eurip- 
ides. Though  never  Greek  in  subject-matter,  he  is 
nearly  always  Greek  in  theme;  and,  in  the  spirit  of  his 
plays,  Lord  Dunsany  has  reminded  us,  more  than  any 
other  modern  writer,  of  the  sheer  augustness  of  the 
tragic  drama  of  the  Greeks. 

In  method,  however,  the  plays  of  Lord  Dunsany  are 
related  clearly  to  the  early  plays  of  Maurice  Maeter- 
linck. Like  Maeterlinck,  Dunsany  has  the  faculty  of 
saying  one  thing  and  meaning  many  others.  In  this 
sense — and  this  alone — his  writings  are  "  symbolical." 
Before  studying  his  collected  plays,  it  would  be  well 
to  re-read  the  famous  letter  concerning  The  Divine 
Comedy  which  Dante  addressed  to  Can  Grande  della 
Scala.  Most  of  what  Dunsany  writes  must  be  read  in 
three  or  four  ways;  and  this  is  also  true  of  the  earlier 
works  of  the  poet  laureate  of  Belgium. 

But  the  prose  style  of  Lord  Dunsany  was  derived 
from  a  source  no  less  familiar  than  the  Jacobean  trans- 
lation of  the  Bible.  Mr.  Bjorkman  has  reported  him 
as  saying,  "  For  years  no  style  seemed  to  me  natural 
but  that  of  the  Bible;  and  I  feared  I  would  never  be- 
come a  writer  when  I  saw  that  other  people  did  not 
use  it." 

The  indebtedness  of  Lord  Dunsany  to  the  prose  style 
of  the  English  translation  of  the  Psalms  of  David  may 


196     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

be  indicated  by  the  following  quotation  from  The 
Golden  Doom: — "  Because  if  a  doom  from  the  stars  fall 
suddenly  upon  a  king  it  swallows  up  his  people  and  all 
things  round  about  him,  and  his  palace  walls  and  the 
walls  of  his  city  and  citadel,  and  the  apes  come  in  from 
the  woods  and  the  large  beasts  from  the  desert,  so  that 
you  would  not  say  that  a  king  had  been  there  at  all." 
And  sometimes,  in  sentences  such  as  the  foregoing, 
we  hear  a  haunting  echo  of  the  voice  of  another  Irish 
dramatist,  untimely  silenced, — the  ever  memorable  poet, 
John  M.  Synge.  Synge  was  richer  than  Dunsany  in 
amplitude  of  outlook  and  variety  of  mood.  But,  like 
his  only  immediate  successor  in  the  theatre  of  the  world, 
he  saw  life  steadily  more  easily  than  he  could  see  it 
whole.  Lord  Dunsany  would  cheerfully  have  died  to 
write  a  masterpiece  like  Riders  to  the  Sea;  and  Synge, 
who  now  is  dead,  would  cheerfully  have  flung  his  hat 
into  the  air  in  recognition  of  such  a  masterpiece  as 
A  Night  at  an  Inn.  Both  these  men  were  natives  of 
"  John  Bull's  Other  Island."  The  world  of  art  owes 
much — oh,  very,  very  much ! — to  this  neglected  outpost 
of  European  culture. 


XXI 

THE  MOOD  OF  MAETERLINCK 

IN  the  Blue  Bird  of  Maurice  Maeterlinck,  the  little 
boy  who  is  the  hero  discovers  the  secret  of  seeing  the 
souls  of  things,  and  wanders  through  the  present,  past, 
and  future,  seeing  all  things  not  as  they  actually  seem 
to  unillumined  eyes  but  as  they  really  are  in  their 
essential  nature.  This  is  the  secret  of  M.  Maeterlinck 
as  a  poet:  he  too,  like  Tyltyl,  sees  the  souls  of  things. 
He  removes  veil  after  veil  of  the  enveloping  actual,  to 
reveal  at  last  the  palpitant  and  vivid  real. 

When  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  was  a  very  little  boy, 
he  drew  a  picture  and  showed  it  to  his  mother. 
"  Mamma,"  said  he,  "  I  have  drawed  a  man.  Shall  I 
draw  his  soul  now?"  This  aspiration  is  fulfilled  by 
M.  Maeterlinck.  He  knows  that  nothing  really  matters 
in  a  man  except  his  soul ;  and,  in  consequence,  his  char- 
acters are  not  people,  but  the  souls  of  people.  He 
knows  that  life,  which — in  the  phrase  of  Shelley — is 
like  a  dome  of  many-colored  glass,  is  merely  a  medium 
through  which  the  human  spirit  catches  glimpses  now 
and  then  of  the  white  radiance  of  eternity;  and  it  is 
only  with  these  glimpses  that  his  fables  are  concerned. 
Reality  is  all  he  cares  about;  and  he  knows  that  actu- 
ality is  merely  an  investiture  which  hides  it  from  the 

197 


198     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

eyes  of  those  who  cannot  see.  To  enter  the  sanctuary 
of  his  mind  is  to  withdraw  from  the  sound  and  fury  of 
the  actual  world  into  a  vasty  silence  that  seems  ever- 
more eloquent  with  echoes ;  it  is  to  ascend  to  an  abso- 
lute awareness  of  the  identity  of  truth  and  beauty;  it 
is  to  be  reminded  of  all  the  beauty  we  have  ever  known 
and  all  the  truth  we  seemed  to  have  forgotten ;  it  is  to 
bathe  in  Dante's  Eunoe, — the  river  of  remembrance;  it 
is  to  attain  that  mood  in  which  happiness  and  sadness 
are  as  one, — the  mood  of  Botticelli's  Primavera, 
whereon  whoever  looks  must  smile  through  tears. 

In  this  mood,  emotions  think  and  thoughts  are  feel- 
ings, and  the  mind  is  conscious  of  an  utter  clarity. 
This  clarity  is  mirrored  in  the  style  of  M.  Maeterlinck. 
His  speech  seems  less  like  speech  than  like  a  sentient 
and  tingling  silence.  It  is  so  simple  that  the  ear  feels 
tender  toward  it.  His  sayings  are  like  little  birds  that 
flutter  home  to  fold  their  wings  within  our  hearts. 

To  interpret  the  plays  of  M.  Maeterlinck  upon  the 
stage  requires  an  art  that  is  kindred  to  his  own, — an 
art  that  is  true  and  beautiful  and  clear  and  simple, — 
an  art  that  can  dispense  with  the  actual  and  concern 
itself  solely  with  the  real.  Such  an  art  was  displayed 
by  the  Washington  Square  Players  in  their  recent  pro- 
duction of  Aglavaine  and  Selysette. 

Aglavaine  and  Selysette  is  the  wisest  and  the  loveliest 
of  all  the  early  plays  of  M.  Maeterlinck, — the  plays, 
that  is  to  say,  which  preceded  Monna  Vanna.  It  ex- 
presses supremely  the  quintessence  of  an  experience 
which  occurs  so  frequently  in  actuality  that  it  has  been 
made  the  subject  of  innumerable  plays  by  innumerable 


THE  MOOD  OF  MAETERLINCK         199 

dramatists.  One  man  loves  two  women,  and  is  loved 
by  both  of  them;  furthermore,  these  women  love  each 
other:  yet,  though  each  of  the  three  parties  to  this 
triangular  relation  is  exalted  by  a  holy  and  high  affec- 
tion for  the  other  two,  the  situation  is  intolerable.  Why 
should  it  be?  .  .  .  No  poet  yet  has  found  the  answer. 
As  Aglavaine  says  to  Selysette,  at  the  crisis  of  the 
play,  "  All  three  of  us  are  making  a  sacrifice  to  some- 
thing which  has  not  even  a  name,  and  which  neverthe- 
less is  much  more  strong  than  we  are.  .  .  .  But  is  it 
not  strange,  Selysette?  I  love  you,  I  love  Meleandre, 
Meleandre  loves  me,  he  loves  you  also,  you  love  us  both, 
and  nevertheless  we  could  not  live  happily,  because  the 
hour  has  not  yet  come  when  human  beings  can  live  in 
such  a  union."  The  hour  has  not  yet  come.  .  .  .  There 
are  possibilities  of  spiritual  intercourse  so  beautiful 
that  the  adventurous  imagination  knows  they  must  be 
really  true.  "  Such  harmony  is  in  immortal  souls ;  but 
whilst  this  muddy  vesture  of  decay  doth  grossly  close 
it  in,  we  cannot  hear  it." 

Realism,  which  plays  the  sedulous  ape  to  actuality, 
can  merely  imitate  the  trappings  and  the  suits  of  an  ex- 
perience; but  romance,  which  thrusts  aside  externals 
and  plucks  out  the  heart  of  a  mystery,  can  communicate 
the  wonder  and  the  sting.  Many  realistic  dramatists 
have  told  us  all  about  this  tragic  triangle ;  but  they 
have  not  told  us  what  the  tragedy  was  all  about. 
They  have  told  us  everything  except — everything.  The 
advantage  of  the  method  of  M.  Maeterlinck  is  that  he 
shows  us  not  so  much  the  experience  itself  as  the  essence 
of  the  experience.  We  are  asked  to  assume  that 


200     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

Selysette  has  the  soul  of  a  child  and  that  Aglavaine  is 
experienced  and  wise.  It  is  because  they  are  so  differ- 
ent that  Meleandre  loves  them  both;  and  it  is  for  this 
reason  also  that  they  love  each  other.  Selysette  longs 
to  grow  up  and  to  learn;  and  Aglavaine  desires  to 
mother  her  and  teach  her.  Meleandre,  hovering  be- 
tween the  two,  seeks  eagerly  to  learn  from  Aglavaine 
the  wisdom  that  he  may  in  turn  bestow  on  Selysette. 
Yet  all  of  this  is  told  abstractly,  as  if  this  tremulous 
and  thrilling  equipoise  were  a  thing  too  delicate  to  be 
expressed  in  the  noisy  terms  of  actuality.  If  a  writer 
were  to  describe  the  Venus  of  Melos  as  a  naked  woman 
with  no  arms,  he  would  express  an  apprehension  of  the 
facts  but  would  inhibit  an  imagination  of  the  truth. 

There  is  scarcely  any  narrative  in  Aglavaine  and 
Selysette;  and  the  five  acts  are  almost  totally  devoid 
of  action,  in  the  usual  theatric  sense.  What  is  shown 
is  a  delicately  graded  sense  of  the  successive  states  of 
the  three  souls  that  are  involved  in  the  experience. 
When  it  has  become  completely  evident  that  the  situation 
is  intolerable,  Aglavaine  decides  to  go  away.  But  the 
tender  little  Selysette  forestalls  her.  She  casts  herself 
from  a  tall  tower ;  and,  with  her  dying  breath,  she 
piteously  begs  both  Aglavaine  and  Meleandre  to  believe 
that  her  sacrifice  was  merely  an  unpremeditated  acci- 
dent. 

The  Washington  Square  Players  have  done  many 
fine  things ;  but  their  production  of  Aglavaine  and 
Selysette  is  by  far  the  finest  thing  that  they  have  done. 
Any  touch  of  actuality  in  the  production  would  have 
marred  the  mood  of  essential  reality  in  which  the  text 


THE  MOOD  OF  MAETERLINCK         201 

had  been  conceived.  Reality  is  abstract;  and  the  illu- 
sion of  reality  can  be  suggested  only  by  means  that  are 
illusory.  The  various  backgrounds  for  the  successive 
scenes  were  suggested,  therefore,  by  different  arrange- 
ments of  gray-green  curtains,  hanging  tall,  and  played 
upon  by  lights  that  differed  in  intensity  and  quality. 
No  built  and  painted  scenery  was  employed,  except  in 
the  single  setting  at  the  top  of  the  tower,  when  Selysette 
was  disclosed  leaning  from  a  lofty  window  with  her  long 
scarf  blowing  largely  in  the  wind.  There  was  one  par- 
ticularly lovely  scene,  imagined  in  the  castle  park,  in 
which  the  interlacing  tracery  of  trees  was  vividly  sug- 
gested by  an  interplay  of  mottled  lights  and  shadows 
on  the  tall  folds  of  the  gray-green  curtains.  This 
successful  experiment  in  imaginative  scenic  setting  must 
be  recorded  as  one  of  the  finest  achievements  of  its  kind 
that  has  ever  been  exhibited  in  any  theatre  of  New 
York. 


XXII 
EURIPIDES  IN  NEW  YORK 

Two  thousand  three  hundred  and  thirty  years  ago, 
the  citizens  of  Athens,  to  the  number  of  twenty  thou- 
sand, assembled  in  the  Theatre  of  Dionysus  on  the 
southern  slope  of  the  Acropolis,  to  witness  the  first  per- 
formance of  The  Trojan  Women  of  Euripides.  On  the 
twenty-ninth  of  May,  1915,  seven  thousand  representa- 
tive citizens  of  New  York  assembled  in  the  beautiful 
new  stadium  designed  by  Mr.  Arnold  W.  Brunner  and 
presented  to  the  city  by  the  munificence  of  Mr.  Adolph 
Lewisohn,  to  witness  a  performance  of  the  same  trag- 
edy, rendered  eloquently  into  English  verse  by  Professor 
Gilbert  Murray.  The  play  had  not  grown  ancient  in 
this  interval.  It  appeared  not  as  a  dead  thing,  of 
interest  only  to  archeologists  who  delve  amid  the  graves 
of  long-departed  glories,  but  as  a  live  thing,  speaking 
to  the  men  and  women  of  this  modern  world  with  a 
voice  as  living  as  the  voice  of  God.  Hundreds  who  had 
come  to  the  dedication  of  the  stadium  merely  because 
it  marked  a  civic  celebration  of  unusual  significance, 
hundreds  also  who,  knowing  nothing  of  Euripides,  had 
been  attracted  to  this  performance  merely  by  a  wide- 
eyed  curiosity,  were  touched  with  pathos  at  the  parting 
between  Andromache  and  Astyanax  and  sat  weeping 
through  the  ultimate  lament  of  Hecuba  over  the  dead 

202 


EURIPIDES  IN  NEW  YORK  203 

body  of  the  little  murdered  boy.  The  effect  of  these 
scenes  on  the  assembled  multitude  sustained  the  verdict 
of  the  great  dramatic  critic,  Aristotle,  who  called 
Euripides  "  the  most  tragic  of  the  poets."  But  a 
deeper  thrill  than  this  response  of  recognition  to  the 
grandest  tragic  art  that  the  world  has  ever  known 
swept  through  and  through  the  seven  thousand  citizens 
who  sat,  in  serried  ranks,  tier  above  tier,  in  the  wide 
curve  of  the  stadium;  for  a  poet,  dead  for  more  than 
twenty  centuries,  seemed  to  be  speaking  with  peculiar 
pertinence  of  the  crisis  which  confronts  the  world  to- 
day. The  name,  Ilion,  went  ringing  through  his  verses ; 
but,  as  it  echoed  round  the  stadium,  it  seemed  mysti- 
cally to  transmute  itself  into  a  kindred  name,  Louvain. 
This  tragedy  was  written  in  a  great  crisis  of  human 
history.  We  stand  to-day,  once  more,  at  such  a  crisis. 
Euripides  is  not  only  the  most  heartrending  of  all 
tragic  writers ;  he  is  also  one  of  the  f ew  authentic  poets 
who  have  looked  into  the  very  mind  of  God  and  spoken 
to  mankind  with  the  ecstatic  gift  of  prophecy.  In  The 
Trojan  Women,  he  prophesied,  two  thousand  three  hun- 
dred and  thirty  years  ago,  the  doom  of  military  prowess 
in  the  ancient  world ;  and  now,  with  voice  undimmed  by 
all  the  intervening  centuries,  he  is  risen  from  the  dead 
to  prophesy  the  doom  of  military  prowess  in  the  world 
to-day. 

To  appreciate  the  peculiar  timeliness  of  this  immor- 
tal tragedy,  we  must  inquire  into  the  circumstances 
under  which  it  was  composed.  During  his  dreamful  and 
ambitious  youth,  Euripides  had  watched  his  well- 
beloved  Athens  ascend  to  the  highest  pinnacle  of  culture 


204     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

that  humanity  has  ever  reached.  Then,  "  drunk  with 
sight  of  power,"  she  deliberately  resolved  to  embark 
upon  the  savage  enterprise  of  conquering  the  world  and 
imposing  her  own  culture  on  unwilling  peoples  by  force 
of  arms.  To  this  project  the  poet  was  opposed.  He 
had  served  in  the  army  for  forty  years,  from  the  age  of 
twenty  to  the  age  of  sixty;  he  had  fought  for  liberty, 
equality,  fraternity,  in  hundreds  of  stirring  combats, 
hand  to  hand ;  and,  with  all  this  vast  experience  behind 
him,  he  realized  the  vanity  of  war  and  longed  at  last  for 
universal  peace.  But  Athens  was  less  wise ;  and,  in  his 
sixties,  Euripides  was  doomed  to  witness  the  gradual 
giving-over  of  his  city  to  a  party  hot  for  war  and  eager 
for  dominion  of  the  world. 

In  the  year  416  B.C.,  the  war-lords  of  Athens  com- 
mitted a  great  crime,  the  like  of  which  was  not  repeated 
by  any  nation  calling  itself  civilized  until  the  year 
1914  A.D.  There  was,  in  the  JEgean  Sea,  a  little  island 
named  Melos,  which  had  steadfastly  maintained  neu- 
trality through  all  the  recent  civil  wars  which  had  con- 
vulsed the  mainland.  Its  inhabitants  desired  merely  to 
be  left  alone;  they  imagined  no  military  projects,  and 
were  contented  to  exist  in  peace  on  the  products  of  their 
agriculture.  But  in  this  ill-omened  year,  the  war-party 
that  had  seized  control  of  Athens  decided  to  annex  this 
peaceful  island.  The  Athenian  envoys  explained  to  the 
Melian  senate  that  it  suited  their  purpose  that  Melos 
should  become  subject  to  their  empire.  They  announced 
their  ultimatum  in  these  words : — "  We  will  not  pretend 
— being  sensible  men  and  talking  to  sensible  men — that 
the  Melians  have  done  us  any  wrong  or  that  we  have 


EURIPIDES  IN  NEW  YORK  205 

any  lawful  claim  to  Melos;  but  we  do  not  wish  any 
islands  to  remain  independent — it  is  a  bad  example  to 
the  others.  The  power  of  Athens  is  practically  irresist- 
ible: Melos  is  free  to  submit  or  be  destroyed."  This 
passage — strangely  enough — has  not  been  quoted  from 
any  recent  speech  of  Chancellor  von  Bethmann-Holl- 
weg;  it  has  been  quoted  from  the  Greek  historian, 
Thucydides,  through  the  medium  of  Professor  Murray. 
The  Melians  replied  that  right  was  rigkt  and  wrong 
was  wrong;  and  that,  rather  than  accept  the  principle 
that  might  was  right,  they  would  prefer  "  to  go  down 
scornful  before  many  spears."  Once  more,  perhaps,  the 
reader  may  need  to  be  reminded  that  this  answer  is 
paraphrased  from  Thucydides,  and  not  from  Albert, 
king  of  the  Belgians. 

The  Athenians  crashed  in,  and  had  their  way.  They 
massacred  the  males  of  Melos,  and  sold  the  women  and 
children  into  slavery.  Then,  elated  with  this  easy  vic- 
tory, they  prepared  a  gigantic  naval  expedition  to 
subjugate  a  great,  free  people  overseas, — the  citizens 
of  Sicily.  It  was  precisely  at  this  moment  that  Eu- 
ripides, after  several  months  of  brooding,  composed 
The  Trojan  Women.  He  was,  at  that  time,  sixty-nine 
years  old.  With  an  entire  life-time  of  patriotic  toil 
behind  him,  he  perceived  clearly  that  Athens  had  rashly 
started  on  the  downward  path  ;  and  he  summoned  all  his 
powers  to  warn  his  well-beloved  city  of  the  doom  fore- 
told to  men  who  had  unthinkingly  assumed  the  burden 
of  a  crime  so  heavy  as  the  crime  of  Melos.  He  chose 
for  the  subject  of  his  tragedy  the  legendary  fall  of 
Troy, — a  story  which  for  centuries  had  been  repeated 


206     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

as  the  greatest  glory  of  the  arms  of  Greece ;  but  he  told 
this  old,  heroic  story  in  an  utterly  unprecedented  way. 
Instead  of  lauding  Menelaus  and  Agamemnon  for  the 
consummation  of  their  ten-years'  campaign  for  con- 
quest, he  summed  up  the  tangible  results  of  this  cam- 
paign from  the  unexpected  point  of  view  of  the  women 
of  Troy — because  the  burden  of  any  offensive  war  falls 
heaviest  upon  the  women  of  the  vanquished.  The  fall 
of  Ilion — which,  for  a  thousand  years  before  Euripides, 
had  been  trumpeted  by  poets  as  a  theme  for  celebration 
— was  seen  by  this  clear-visioned  prophet — with  the 
imminent  example  of  weak  Melos  burning  in  his  eyes — 
to  be,  instead,  a  theme  for  lamentation  and  for  grim 
foreboding  of  a  Nemesis  to  be. 

For  this  prophetic  poet  had  perceived  that,  in  his 
own  day,  his  own  Athens  had  surrendered  to  the  sin  of 
Pride — a  sin  with  which  the  gods  made  men  insane  be- 
fore destroying  them ;  and,  in  this  poignant  tragedy,  he 
sought  to  show  his  fellow-citizens  that  the  glamor  of 
military  conquest  is  nothing  but  a  sham,  and  that, 
whenever  a  mighty  wrong  succeeds  in  trampling  down 
a  worthy  right,  the  only  real  glory  is  the  glory  of  the 
glimmering  of  truth  for  those  who  suffer  nobly  for  the 
right,  and  die  in  misery  with  souls  still  undestroyed. 
Before  twenty  thousand  citizens  of  Athens,  this  veteran 
of  many  wars  was  bold  enough  to  champion  the  cause 
of  stricken  Melos,  and  to  cry  aloud, — in  words  that  may 
be  quoted  from  a  kindred  poet, — "  That  way  madness 
lies !  " 

We  know  now  that  Athens  failed  to  heed  this  prophet 
of  the  living  God.  Euripides  was  doomed  to  exile,  and 


EURIPIDES  IN  NEW  YORK  207 

sent  forth,  in  the  winter  of  his  years,  to  break  bread 
with  the  barbarians  of  Macedonia,  and,  alone  among 
their  mountains,  to  write  the  Bacchce  and  to  die. 
Meanwhile,  the  expedition  against  Sicily  set  sail — and 
its  sailing  marked  the  doom  of  Athens.  The  Nemesis 
that  lies  in  wait  to  punish  those  overweening  mortals 
who  surrender  to  the  sin  of  Pride — the  Greek  word  for 
which  is  hubris — overwhelmed,  precisely  as  the  poet  had 
predicted,  the  greatest  city  of  the  ancient  world.  When 
Athens  fell,  the  highest  and  noblest  achievements  of 
mankind  fell  crashing  with  her  to  oblivion.  "  Then  I, 
and  you,  and  all  of  us  fell  down," — exactly  as  this 
prophet  had  foretold:  and  more  than  twenty  centuries 
were  destined  to  elapse  before  another  nation  dared  to 
recommit  the  crime  of  Melos  and  to  affront  the  anger  of 
the  gods. 

Among  the  Greeks  there  was  a  fable  that  history 
would  move  in  cycles  and  would  repeat  itself  precisely 
in  every  thousand  years.  This  fable  was  in  the  minds 
of  many  hundred  citizens  when,  under  the  gray  sky 
of  the  twenty-ninth  of  May,  such  words  as  these  rang 
out  from  the  voice  of  great  Euripides: — 

"  How  are  ye  blind, 
Ye  treaders  down  of  cities,  ye  that  cast 
Temples  to  desolation,  and  lay  waste 
Tombs,  the  untrodden  sanctuaries  where  lie 
The  ancient  dead ;  yourselves  so  soon  to  die !  " 

and  again, 

"  Would  ye  be  wise,  ye  Cities,  fly  from  war! 
Yet  if  war  come,  there  is  a  crown  in  death 
For  her  that  striveth  well  and  perisheth 
Unstained :  to  die  in  evil  were  the  stain !  " 


208     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

More  than  twenty  centuries  after  Euripides  was 
buried,  there  was  dug  up  in  the  little  isle  of  Melos  an 
armless  statue  of  the  goddess  Aphrodite  which  has  be- 
come to  millions  of  men  and  women  of  this  modern  age 
a  living  symbol  of  "  the  glory  that  was  Greece," — the 
glory  that  was  sacrificed  when  Athens  set  her  culture  at 
the  service  of  efficient  barbarism.  Millions  of  people 
who  are  unaware  that  the  fall  of  Athens  must  be  dated 
from  that  rash  moment  when  this  city  of  all  cities 
decided  to  violate  the  neutrality  of  a  little  island  in  the 
blue  JEgean  Sea,  have  bowed  their  heads  in  mere  hu- 
mility before  that  absolute  expression  of  pure  beauty — 
that  utter  culmination  of  all  dreams  of  earth — which 
was  rescued  from  this  little  island  in  some  succeeding 
century.  Even  the  Parthenon  is  now  a  shattered  ruin, 
standing  lonely  on  a  sun-parched  hill,  to  remind  us 
wistfully  of  all  that  Athens  used  to  be ;  but  the  armless, 
radiant  wonder  in  the  Louvre  speaks  more  eloquently 
still  of  the  vision  of  a  man  of  Melos,  whose  island  was 
made  desolate  before  his  birth  by  the  armies  of  some 
utterly  unnoted  war-lord  who  rashly  sought  to  trample 
down  the  world,  and  only  accomplished  for  his  country 
an  everlasting  shame. 

The  many  thousand  people  of  New  York  who  wit- 
nessed this  revival  of  The  Trojan  Women  were  all 
a-thrill  with  recent  memories  of  Louvain  and  Malines, 
of  Rheims  and  Ypres, — and  of  the  Lusitania.  This  fact 
afforded  a  double  meaning  to  the  lines,  which  was 
analogous  to  that  other  double  meaning  which  must 
have  swept  through  the  minds  of  the  twenty  thousand 
citizens  of  Athens  who  first  listened  to  this  tragic  drama 


EURIPIDES  IN  NEW  YORK  209 

two  thousand  three  hundred  and  thirty  years  ago. 
The  brooding  skies  seemed  rent  with  prophecy;  and, 
out  of  a  vast  silence,  there  seemed  to  come  a  voice, 
ancient  of  days  and  hoary  with  omniscience,  that  cried 
aloud,  "  Vengeance  is  mine,  saith  the  Lord :  I  will 
repay ! " 

The  translation  of  Professor  Gilbert  Murray  is  be- 
yond all  praise.  There  is,  in  the  German  language,  a 
fitting  symbol  for  this  sort  of  work,  which  is  incor- 
porated in  the  word  Nachsingen.  Professor  Murray 
does  not  merely  repeat  the  meaning  of  Euripides:  in  a 
very  literal  sense,  he  "  sings  after  "  the  great  poet  of 
the  Greeks.  He  writes  almost  as  well  as  Swinburne; 
and  yet  his  writing  is,  at  all  points,  faithful  to  his  text. 
Consider,  for  example,  such  a  passage  as  the  following, 
in  which  Andromache,  in  The  Trojan  Women,  is  saying 
farewell  to  her  little  martyred  boy: — 

"  Thou  little  thing 

That  curlest  in  my  arms,  what  sweet  scents  cling 
All  round  thy  neck!    Beloved;  can  it  be 
All  nothing,  that  this  bosom  cradled  thee 
And  fostered;  all  the  weary  nights,  wherethrough 
I  watched  upon  thy  sickness,  till  I  grew 
Wasted  with  watching?     Kiss  me.     This  one  time; 
Not  ever  again.     Put  up  thine  arms,  and  climb 
About  my  neck:  now,  kiss  me,  lips  to  lips."   .    .    . 

In  staging  this  tremendous  play,  Mr.  Granville 
Barker  ascended,  at  nearly  every  point,  to  the  height 
of  his  great  argument.  His  method  of  production  re- 
vealed a  tactful  compromise  between  the  expectation 


210     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

of  the  average  modern  audience  and  the  expectation  of 
the  archeologist.  He  discarded  the  mask  and  the 
cothurnus ;  but  he  retained  the  formal  evolutions  of  the 
chorus  in  the  orchestra  and  the  superior  position  of 
the  three  actors  on  the  elevated  stage.  The  stage  itself 
— which  was  transportable  from  stadium  to  stadium — 
revealed  a  lofty  wall,  transpierced  by  the  conventional 
three  doors,  and  descending  to  the  orchestra  by  the 
customary  flights  of  steps.  Upon  this  naked  platform 
Mr.  Barker  contrived  to  recall  a  vivid  reminiscence  of 
all  the  pomps  and  glories  of  the  ancient  stage. 


XXIII 
ROMANCE   AND   REALISM   IN   THE   DRAMA 


THE  purpose  of  all  fiction — whether  realistic  or 
romantic — is  to  embody  certain  truths  of  human  life 
in  a  series  of  imagined  facts.  The  difference  between 
the  two  methods  is  merely  this: — the  realist  induces 
his  theme  from  his  details,  and  the  romantic  deduces 
his  details  from  his  theme. 

In  order  to  apprise  us  of  the  truth  which  he  wishes 
to  reveal,  the  realist  first  leads  us  through  a  series  of 
imagined  facts  as  similar  as  possible  to  those  selected 
details  of  actual  life  which  he  studied  in  order  to 
arrive  at  his  general  conception.  He  elaborately  imi- 
tates the  facts  of  actual  life,  so  that  he  may  say  to  us 
finally,  "  This  is  the  sort  of  thing  that  I  have  seen  in 
the  world,  and  from  this  I  have  learned  the  truth  I 
have  to  tell  you."  He  leads  us  step  by  step  from  the 
particular  to  the  general,  until  we  gradually  grow 
aware  of  the  truths  he  wishes  to  express.  And  in  the 
end,  we  have  not  only  grown  acquainted  with  these 
truths,  but  have  also  been  made  familiar  with  every 
step  in  the  process  of  inductive  thought  by  which  the 
author  himself  became  aware  of  them. 

211 


212     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

But  the  romantic  artist  leads  us  in  the  contrary 
direction, — namely,  from  the  general  to  the  particular. 
He  does  not  attempt  to  show  us  how  he  arrived  at  his 
general  conception.  His  only  care  is  to  convey  his 
general  idea  effectively  by  giving  it  a  specific  illustra- 
tive embodiment.  He  feels  no  obligation  to  make  the 
imagined  facts  of  his  story  resemble  closely  the  details 
of  actual  life ;  he  is  anxious  only  that  they  shall  repre- 
sent his  idea  adequately  and  consistently.  He  con- 
structs his  tale  deductively:  beginning  with  a  general 
conception,  he  reduces  it  to  particular  terms  that  are 
appropriate  to  express  it.  "  I  have  learned  something 
in  the  world,"  he  says  to  us :  "  Here  is  a  fable  that  will 
make  it'  clear  to  you."  * 

We  have  become  so  accustomed  to  the  realistic 
method  in  modern  art  that  the  reader  may  need  to  be 
reminded  that  all  fiction  was  romantic  until  three  cen- 
turies ago.  The  reason  why  realism  has  arisen  only 
recently  in  the  history  of  art  is  that  the  direction  of 
the  world's  thought  was  prevailingly  deductive  till 
the  days  of  Francis  Bacon.  Bacon — the  founder  of 
modern  philosophy  and  the  precursor  of  modern  science 
— was  the  first  great  leader  of  thought  who  insisted 
that  induction  was  a  safer  and  more  efficient  method 
than  deduction  in  the  search  for  truth.  Realism  is 
contemporaneous  with  modern  science  and  other  appli- 
cations of  inductive  thought.  Romance  survives,  of 
course,  with  scarcely  an  appreciable  impairment  of  its 

*  The  foregoing  paragraphs  are  summarized  from  Chapter  II 
of  Materials  and  Methods  of  Fiction.  The  following  application 
of  the  argument  to  the  study  of  the  drama  is,  however,  new. 


ROMANCE  AND  REALISM  IN  DRAMA     213 

vigor;  but  it  has  lost  the  undisputed  empery  of  fiction 
which  it  held  in  ancient  and  in  medieval  times. 

It  was  not  until  the  nineteenth  century  that  the  in- 
ductive method  of  revealing  truth  became  predominant 
in  all  the  arts, — though,  in  the  single  art  of  painting, 
it  had  been  adopted  as  early  as  the  seventeenth  century 
by  the  great  masters  of  the  Netherlands.  The  drama 
was  the  last  of  all  the  arts  to  admit  the  new  method  of 
expression :  indeed,  the  rise  of  realism  in  the  drama  did 
not  begin  till  after  1850.  The  reason  for  this  delay  is 
obvious.  Realism  demands  of  the  artist  an  ability  to 
imitate  details  of  actual  life ;  and  it  was  not  until  the 
second  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  that  the  physical 
equipment  of  the  theatre  had  been  developed  to  a  point 
that  made  possible  the  exhibition  of  stage-pictures 
which  could  repeat  the  very  look  of  life. 

Realism  was  impossible  on  the  platform-stage  of  the 
Elizabethans;  and  it  was  almost  equally  impossible  on 
the  apron-stage  of  the  eighteenth  century.  It  became 
possible  only  after  the  adoption  of  the  picture-frame 
proscenium.  A  few  of  the  Elizabethan  dramatists  re- 
vealed a  temperamental  tendency  toward  realism. 
This  tendency,  for  instance,  is  apparent  in  such  plays 
as  Ben  Jonson's  Bartholomew  Fair.  In  this  record  of 
the  manners  of  contemporary  London,  Jonson  was  as 
realistic  as  any  dramatist  could  be  on  a  stage  devoid  of 
scenery;  but  he  suffered  the  disadvantage  of  attempt- 
ing a  type  of  art  with  which  his  theatre,  at  the  moment, 
was  unprepared  to  cope.  It  was  far  easier  for  Shake- 
speare, in  the  same  theatre,  to  suggest  the  atmosphere 
of  the  Forest  of  Arden  by  availing  himself  of  the  free 


214     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

conventions  and  easy  assumptions  of  an  essentially 
romantic  stage. 

When  finally,  however,  in  the  latter  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  the  theatre  was  prepared,  by  the 
adoption  of  the  picture-frame  proscenium,  to  imitate 
details  of  actuality,  the  drama  rushed  at  once  to  the 
contrary  extreme;  and  a  realistic  method  of  present- 
ment was  imposed  upon  all  playwrights,  regardless  of 
their  temperamental  tendencies.  When  the  theatre — 
which  had  been  romantic  ever  since  the  days  of  ^Eschy- 
lus — became  at  last  realistic,  it  became  realistic  with  a 
vengeance.  Romantic  writers  for  a  platform-stage — 
like  Shakespeare — were  encumbered  with  realistic  scen- 
ery designed  for  a  stage  that  made  a  necessity  of  its 
new-found  virtue  of  imitating  actuality.  A  totally 
illogical  demand  arose  that  every  play  should  have  the 
look  of  life;  and  this  demand  made  the  theatre  as 
inhospitable  to  romantic  writers  as  the  earlier  Eliza- 
bethan theatre  had  been  inhospitable  to  realistic  writers. 
It  was  just  as  difficult  for  Maeterlinck  to  write  for 
Ibsen's  stage  as  it  had  been  difficult,  three  centuries 
before,  for  Jonson  to  write  for  Shakespeare's  stage.  In 
learning  how  to  be  realistic,  the  practitioners  of  theatric 
art  had  forgotten  how  to  be  romantic.  The  gain  was 
compensated  by  an  equal  loss. 

To  dissolve  this  dilemma  and  to  destroy  this  dead- 
lock, a  movement  toward  a  new  stagecraft  has  very 
recently  been  instituted.  The  leaders  of  this  movement 
are  willing  to  leave  the  realistic  stage  alone  as  a  medium 
of  expression  for  realistic  dramatists ;  but  they  demand 
that  romantic  dramatists  should  be  released  from  the 


ROMANCE  AND  REALISM  IN  DRAMA     215 

conventions  of  the  recently  developed  realistic  stage, 
and  should  be  permitted  to  readopt  the  more  summary 
and  free  conventions  of  those  earlier  periods  in  which 
the  theatre  was  essentially  romantic.  They  are  willing 
to  accord  to  Ibsen  and  Pinero  the  special  advantages 
of  the  picture-frame  proscenium;  but  they  insist  that 
Maeterlinck  shall  also  be  accorded  the  contrary  advan- 
tages of  the  platform-stage  of  Shakespeare.  If  a 
writer  of  the  present  day  prefers  a  Forest  of  Arden 
made  of  words  to  a  Forest  of  Arden  made  of  canvas 
trees  and  cotton  rocks,  these  revolutionists  against  the 
recent  tyranny  of  realism  demand  that  he  shall  be 
allowed  to  have  his  way.  If  a  realist  must  have  actual 
water  in  an  actual  pitcher,  let  him  have  it;  but  if  a 
romantic  prefers  imaginary  water  in  a  merely  deco- 
rative pitcher,  let  him  have  it  also ; — here  we  have,  in  a 
single  illustration,  the  program  of  the  revolutionists. 

The  point  of  this  revolt  against  realism  in  the  theatre 
is,  assuredly,  well  taken.  The  advocates  of  the  new 
stagecraft  do  not  demand  the  abolition  of  picture-frame 
productions  of  realistic  plays;  they  demand  only  that 
romantic  plays  shall  no  longer  be  produced  in  a  realistic 
manner.  They  insist  that  every  writer  shall  be  free  to 
choose  his  method,  and  that  an  author  who  prefers  to 
tell  his  truth  in  terms  of  fable  shall  not  be  forced  to 
represent  his  truth  in  terms  of  fact.  They  do  not  advo- 
cate the  suppression  of  realism  on  the  stage;  they 
merely  advocate  a  restriction  of  the  tyranny  of  realism 
over  writers  whose  temperamental  tendency  is  not  real- 
istic but  romantic. 

In  the  English-speaking  theatre,  the  acknowledged 


216     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

leader  of  this  movement  toward  a  new  stagecraft  is 
Mr.  Granville  Barker, — an  arch-realist  in  his  own 
plays,  and  an  arch-romantic  in  his  method  of  producing 
the  plays  of  writers  other-minded  than  himself. 

Mr.  Barker's  initial  offering  in  this  country  was  a 
double  bill  composed  of  The  Man  Who  Married  a  Dumb 
Wife,  by  Anatole  France,  and  Androcles  and  the  Lion, 
by  Bernard  Shaw.  La  Comedie  de  Celui  qui  Epousa 
une  Femme  Muette  is  merely  a  dramatic  anecdote 
developed  by  M.  France  from  two  paragraphs  of 
Rabelais  in  which  the  medieval  humorist  outlined  the 
plot  of  a  presumably  imaginary  comedy  which  he  had 
seen  acted,  in  company  with  seven  of  his  friends,  at  the 
University  of  Montpellier.  The  point  of  the  anecdote 
is  this: — A  lawyer,  married  to  a  very  beautiful  woman 
who  is  mute,  invokes  the  services  of  a  surgeon  to  untie 
her  tongue.  After  the  operation,  she  becomes  so  volu- 
ble and  garrulous  that  he  prefers  to  have  her  dumb 
again ;  but,  since  the  surgeon  cannot  nullify  the  opera- 
tion, the  lawyer  is  forced  to  accept  the  alternative  of 
being  rendered  deaf. 

In  Androcles  and  the  Lion,  Mr.  Shaw  has  amplified 
a  familiar  Latin  fable  and  has  embroidered  it  with  satir- 
ical dialogue  in  his  most  light-hearted  vein.  Androcles, 
a  Greek  tailor,  is  a  keen  lover  of  animals.  Meeting  a 
lion  in  the  jungle,  who  is  suffering  great  pain  from  a 
thorn  in  his  paw,  Androcles  extracts  the  thorn  and 
wins  the  affection  of  a  beast  who  might  otherwise  have 
eaten  him.  This  meek  and  gentle  hero  is  a  Christian; 
and,  because  of  his  proscribed  religion,  he  is  later 
doomed  to  be  devoured  by  wild  animals  in  the  Roman 


ROMANCE  AND  REALISM  IN  DRAMA     217 

Coliseum.  The  beast  to  whom  he  is  thrown,  however, 
happens  to  be  the  very  lion  he  had  befriended  in  the 
jungle ;  and  this  lion,  recognizing  Androcles,  refuses  to 
attack  him.  The  apparent  miracle  by  which  the  hero 
tames  the  lion  wins  for  Androcles  the  adulation  of  the 
Emperor  and  immunity  from  further  persecution.  This 
traditional  fable  is  employed  by  Mr.  Shaw  as  a  frame- 
work for  some  of  the  wittiest  and  wisest  dialogue  that 
he  has  written  in  recent  years. 

Neither  of  these  two  plays  attempts  to  imitate  details 
of  actuality;  and,  in  producing  them,  Mr.  Barker  has 
discarded  the  conventions  of  the  realistic  stage.  Before 
the  curtain,  he  has  built  a  wide  apron,  descending  in 
terraced  steps  to  the  auditorium;  and  in  this  empty 
apron  he  has  conducted  a  great  part  of  the  action.  Be- 
hind the  curtain,  his  scenery  is  merely  summary  and 
suggestive, — not  detailed  and  photographic,  like  the 
scenery  of  the  recent  realistic  theatre.  His  costumes 
are  designed  to  be  appropriate  to  a  general  decorative 
scheme ;  they  are  not  designed  to  be  exactly  representa- 
tive of  the  particular  place  and  the  particular  time 
denominated  in  the  action.  Mr.  Barker's  Roman  sol- 
diers are  not  dressed  like  actual  Roman  soldiers  of  the 
third  century,  A.D.  :  they  are  merely  dressed  like  people 
who  might  well  enough  be  soldiers  and  might  well 
enough  be  Roman.  He  suggests  the  immanence  of  the 
Eternal  City  by  a  pale  monochromatic  background  with 
three  round  arches,  and  by  a  sweeping  gesture  of  an 
actor  toward  the  gallery  which  points  out  an  imaginary 
Coliseum.  For  the  purposes  of  a  romantic  play,  this, 
surely,  is  a  better  method  of  investiture  than  a  pictorial 


218     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

representation  of  the  Coliseum  on  a  back-drop  and  a 
solid  imitation  of  the  Arch  of  Titus  in  the  foreground. 
In  Mr.  Barker's  hands,  the  stage  reminds  us  more  of 
the  reality  of  Rome,  the  less  it  is  made  to  imitate  that 
actuality  of  which  we  have  been  informed  by  archeolo- 
gists.  Two  other  conventions  of  the  Elizabethan  stage 
have  been  readopted  by  this  revolutionist.  He  has 
resumed  the  Shakesperian  device  of  the  upper-room,  or 
balcony,  and  thereby  assails  the  eye  from  two  levels 
simultaneously;  and  by  obliterating  footlights,  and 
illuminating  the  stage  entirely  from  above,  he  has 
destroyed  that  sharp  distinction  between  the  actor  and 
the  audience  which  was  required  by  the  picture-frame 
proscenium. 

Before  the  advent  of  Mr.  Granville  Barker  in  Amer- 
ica, the  method  employed  by  Mr.  David  Belasco  in  the 
production  of  his  plays  was  invariably  the  method  of 
the  realists.  He  always  achieved  his  effects  by  an  ag- 
glomeration of  actual  details.  For  the  last  act  of 
The  Governor's  Lady,  for  example,  he  merely  bought  a 
Childs'  Restaurant,  complete  in  all  details,  and,  knock- 
ing out  the  fourth  wall,  set  it  up  upon  the  stage.  The 
incident  enacted  in  this  setting  was  untrue  to  life; 
but  a  false  air  of  verisimilitude  was  accorded  to  it  by 
the  actuality  of  the  environment. 

This  method  served  well  enough  for  realistic  plays; 
but  Mr.  Belasco  was  guilty  of  the  error  of  applying 
this  same  method  to  the  production  of  plays  essentially 
romantic.  The  mystic  moments  of  The  Return  of 
Peter  Grimm  were  marred  by  a  cluttering  of  unneces- 
sary furniture  upon  the  stage ;  and  The  Darling  of  the 


ROMANCE  AND  REALISM  IN  DRAMA     219 

Gods,  for  all  its  exactitude  of  scenery  and  costumes, 
was  less  Oriental  in  its  atmosphere  than  The  Yellow 
Jacket,  which  was  produced  upon  a  sceneless  stage. 

It  is,  therefore,  especially  important  to  record  that 
Mr.  Belasco  has  learned  at  last  that  realism  is  one 
thing  and  romance  is  another.  His  production  of 
Marie-Odile,  by  Edward  Knoblock,  showed  that  even 
so  staunch  a  realist  had  finally  been  converted  to  the 
new  stagecraft.  For  this  production,  Mr.  Belasco  sup- 
pressed his  footlights,  extended  his  stage  in  an  apron 
before  the  curtain,  and  obscured  his  picture-frame 
proscenium  with  simple  hangings  of  a  neutral  tint. 
Thereby  he  destroyed  that  sharp  distinction  between 
the  stage  and  the  auditorium  which  was  developed  in 
the  preceding  period  of  realism.  For  the  first  time  in 
his  career — if  we  except  his  treatment  of  the  dream- 
passages  in  The  Phantom  Rival — Mr.  Belasco  devised  a 
setting  that  was  simple  and  summary  and  suggestive, 
instead  of  actual,  detailed,  complex.  The  action  of 
Marie-Odile  took  place  in  the  refectory  of  an  Alsatian 
convent  during  the  Franco-Prussian  war :  yet  there  was 
nothing  on  the  stage  to  indicate  with  any  exactness  the 
date  or  place  of  the  story.  The  architecture  was  in- 
definite,— so  indefinite  that  the  observer  could  not  even 
determine  whether  it  was  Romanesque  or  Gothic  or 
Renaissance.  The  furniture  was  of  the  simplest;  and 
not  a  single  article  of  furniture  or  decoration  was 
placed  upon  the  stage  that  was  not  required  by  some 
exigency  of  the  action.  As  a  consequence  of  this  sup- 
pression of  superfluous  details,  the  production  of 
Marie-Odile  made  an  appeal  to  the  imagination  that 


220     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

surpassed  in  potency  the  appeal  of  any  of  the  many 
plays  that  Mr.  Belasco  had  produced  in  the  realistic 
manner. 

n 

That  spectacle  and  drama  are  two  different  things — 
so  different  that  the}7  can  never  be  successfully  con- 
joined— was  clearly  understood  by  the  Elizabethans 
three  hundred  years  ago.  When  Ben  Jonson  wrote  a 
comedy  or  a  tragedy,  he  produced  it  on  a  practically 
sceneless  stage ;  when  he  wrote  a  masque,  he  produced 
it  with  the  most  sumptuous  scenical  embellishment.  In 
the  first  instance,  the  play  was  the  thing,  and  the 
author  would  not  permit  his  drama  to  be  overlaid  with 
scenery ;  in  the  second  instance,  spectacle  was  the  thing, 
and  the  author,  holding  his  dramatic  talent  in  abeyance, 
merely  planned  a  sequence  of  processions,  songs,  and 
dances  that  would  afford  a  fitting  theme  for  decoration. 

It  is  absurd  to  assume  that,  because  Shakespeare 
produced  The  Merchant  of  Venice  and  Hamlet  on  a 
sceneless  stage,  he  knew  nothing  about  scenery.  As  a 
practical  man  of  the  theatre,  he  must  have  known  all 
that  had  been  done,  and  all  that  could  be  done,  on  the 
contemporary  stage.  He  must  have  known,  as  scholars 
know  to-day,  that  the  art  of  scenical  embellishment  had, 
in  his  own  sixteenth  century,  been  developed  to  a  very 
high  point  in  Italy;  for  his  many  friends  who  had  re- 
turned from  the  conventional  Italian  tour  of  the  time 
must  have  told  him  of  Italian  opera.  Anybody  who 
will  take  the  trouble  to  examine  the  hundreds  of  en- 
gravings of  Renaissance  Italian  stage-sets  still  extant 


ROMANCE  AND  REALISM  IN  DRAMA     221 

will  perceive  that — except  in  the  mere  matter  of  light- 
ing— no  scenic  artist  in  the  world  to-day  can  do  any- 
thing that  the  Italians  could  not  do,  and  did  not  do, 
three  centuries  ago.  Their  scenic  art  was  imported  to 
England  by  Inigo  Jones ;  but,  with  a  fine  sense  of  the 
fitness  of  things,  the  Elizabethan  poets  refused  to  spoil 
their  plays  with  spectacle,  and  reserved  magnificence  of 
setting  for  their  masques.  The  simple  truth  of  the 
matter  seems  to  be  that  Shakespeare  did  not  want 
scenery  in  the  rlast  act  of  The  Merchant  of  Venice, 
because  he  wanted  the  audience  to  listen  to  his  lines; 
and  that  he  did  not  want  scenery  in  Hamlet,  because  he 
wanted  the  spectators,  at  all  times,  to  focus  their  atten- 
tion on  the  leading  actor. 

Whenever  a  spectacle  like  The  Garden  of  Paradise 
is  produced  in  New  York  at  the  present  time,  the 
newspapers  descant  on  the  "  unprecedented  "  expense 
of  the  production.  It  is  our  American  habit  to  measure 
art  in  dollars  and  cents.  The  Garden  of  Paradise  is 
said  to  have  cost  $50,000.  On  February  3,  1633-4, 
the  Gentlemen  of  the  four  Inns  of  Court  in  London 
presented  before  the  King  and  Queen  a  masque  by 
James  Shirley,  entitled  The  Triumph  of  Peace.  This 
production  cost  £21,000.  But  money,  in  the  first  half 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  was  worth  more  than  three 
times  as  much  as  it  is  worth  to-day ;  and  it  would  cost 
not  less  than  £63,000  to  produce  The  Triumph  of  Peace 
on  the  same  lavish  scale  at  the  present  time.  Since  the 
expense  of  a  single  performance  of  this  masque  of  Shir- 
ley's amounted  to  more  than  $300,000,  it  is  easy  to 
perceive  that  the  expense  of  a  spectacle  like  The  Garden 


222     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

of  Paradise  is  not  so  "  unprecedented  "  after  all.  If 
art  must  be  measured  in  dollars  and  cents,  we  should 
at  least  be  willing  to  admit  that  our  Elizabethan  prede- 
cessors excelled  us  in  the  art  of  spectacle. 

The  text  of  The  Triumph  of  Peace  is  still  extant.  It 
consists  almost  entirely  of  descriptions  of  the  scenery, 
the  costumes,  and  the  properties,  and  directions  for  the 
dances  and  the  grand  processions.  The  dialogue,  quite 
obviously,  was  not  intended  to  be  listened  to.  There  are 
several  songs,  of  course ;  because  music  was  essential  to 
a  masque,  and  it  was  easier  to  sing  words  than  to  sing 
do,  re,  mi,  fa,  sol.  These  songs  are  beautifully  written ; 
for  Shirley  was  so  great  a  lyrist  that  it  was  easier  for 
him  to  write  a  good  song  than  a  bad  one.  But  it  is 
evident  that  the  poet  never  for  a  moment  regarded  this 
masque  as  a  literary  composition.  On  the  title  page  of 
the  original  quarto,  his  name  appears  as  the  "  inven- 
tor "  of  the  masque,  and  coincident  credit  is  assigned  to 
Inigo  Jones  for  "  the  scene  and  ornament,"  and  to 
William  Lawes  and  Simon  Ives  for  "  the  composition  of 
the  music." 

But  when  Shirley  wrote  a  play — The  Traitor,  for 
example — he  presented  it  without  adornment,  on  the 
traditional  inner-and-outer  stage  of  the  Elizabethan 
theatre, — a  bare  platform,  with  only  a  summary  hint 
of  scenery  behind  the  arras.  When  he  wanted  the  public 
to  listen  to  his  lines  and  care  about  his  characters,  he 
was  careful  to  avoid  stage-pictures  that  would  distract 
attention  from  his  poetry  and  from  his  drama.  Shirley 
could  "  invent  "  a  spectacle,  and  he  could  write  a  play ; 
but  he  never  attempted  to  do  both  things  at  once.  He 


ROMANCE  AND  REALISM  IN  DRAMA     223 

would  no  more  have  permitted  an  expenditure  of 
$300,000  on  the  production  of  The  Traitor  than  he 
would  have  allowed  The  Triumph  of  Peace  to  be  re- 
peated on  a  sceneless  stage.  He  could  make  art  either 
for  the  eye  or  for  the  ear;  but  he  had  common  sense 
enough  to  know  that  people  cannot,  at  the  same  time, 
and  with  equal  eagerness,  both  look  at  pictures  and 
listen  to  words. 


XXIV 

SCENIC  SETTINGS  IN  AMERICA 


ANYBODY  who  has  studied  Mr.  Hiram  Kelly  Moder- 
well's  instructive  treatise  on  The  Theatre  of  To-Day 
must  admit  that  our  American  theatre,  considered  gen- 
erally, is  loitering  at  least  ten  years  behind  the  times. 
This  fact  is  somewhat  disappointing  to  those  of  us 
who  are  habituated  to  believe  that  America  is  naturally 
the  leader  of  the  world  in  matters  of  mere  enterprise. 
The  phrase,  "  mere  enterprise,"  is  used  advisedly ;  for 
though  the  drama  is  an  art,  the  theatre  is  a  business. 
Though  we  might  be  willing  to  admit  that  the  back- 
wardness of  our  drama  is  necessitated  by  a  native  in- 
eptitude for  art,  it  would  be  much  more  difficult  to 
admit  that  the  backwardness  of  our  theatre  is  neces- 
sitated by  a  native  ineptitude  for  business.  This  latter 
hypothesis  would  be  a  little  staggering.  America  has 
always  been  supposed  to  be  a  country  of  good  business 
men.  We  have  proved  that  we  can  run  such  things  as 
railroads,  mines,  and  steel  plants  efficiently  and  well.  Is 
i*  really  possible  that  when  it  comes  to  running  thea- 
tres, we  are  easily  outdistanced,  not  only  by  the  efficient 
Germans  but  also  by  the  langourous  Russians? 

The  facts  appear  to  be  incontrovertible.  The  best- 

224 


SCENIC  SETTINGS  IN  AMERICA       225 

conducted  theatre  in  the  world — according  to  the  testi- 
mony of  most  investigators  who  have  studied  the  matter 
at  first  hand — is  the  Art  Theatre  of  Moscow;  and, 
following  close  upon  the  heels  of  this  leading  institution, 
are  the  foremost  theatres  of  Germany  and  Hungary. 
France,  also,  is  close  up  in  the  running;  but  the  Amer- 
ican theatre  is  a  manifest  anachronism.  What  is  the 
reason  for  our  backwardness  in  this  matter  of  mere 
enterprise  ? 

The  reason  is  not  difficult  to  define;  but  it  is  ex- 
tremely difficult  to  understand.  It  is  merely  that  the 
men  who  control  the  theatre  in  America  are  not  suffi- 
ciently interested  in  their  own  business  to  learn  enough 
about  it  to  make  their  methods  up  to  date.  Their  con- 
servatism— to  dignify  this  strange  inertia  by  a  lofty 
word — seems  curiously  un-American.  We  are  not  ac- 
customed to  seeing  our  big  business  men  defeated  in  a 
matter  of  mere  business. 

Suppose,  for  purposes  of  illustration,  that  an  Amer- 
ican business  man  has  invested  half  a  million  dollars  in 
the  manufacture  of  mustard.  Suppose,  further,  that 
he  hears,  from  a  returning  traveler,  that  the  Germans 
have  found  a  way  to  manufacture  better  mustard  at  a 
smaller  cost.  What  does  he  do?  He  immediately  goes 
to  Germany  himself,  or  sends  an  emissary,  to  learn  the 
new  improvement  in  his  business ;  thereafter,  he  revises 
his  own  methods  of  manufacture,  in  order  to  bring  them 
up  to  date;  and,  by  this  means,  he  is  soon  enabled  to 
undersell  the  world.  This  is  the  story  of  American 
business,  as  it  is  ordinarily  recorded  and  commonly 
believed.  If  there  was  anything  new  to  be  learned  about 


226     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

running  railroads,  Mr.  Harriman  learned  it  and  put  it 
immediately  into  operation;  and,  if  there  is  anything 
new  to  be  learned  about  the  manufacture  of  steel,  it  is 
not  likely  to  escape  the  eagerly  acquisitive  mind  of  Mr. 
Schwab. 

This  is  the  way  in  which  Americans  do  business  in 
every  line — except  the  one  line  of  the  theatre.  When 
word  is  brought  from  Europe  that  a  great  improvement 
has  been  made  in  the  mechanism  of  the  theatre,  our 
American  managers  are  not  sufficiently  interested  to  in- 
vestigate the  matter.  As  business  men,  they  might  save 
thousands  of  dollars  by  sending  an  emissary  to  Ger- 
many or  Russia  to  study  the  innovation  and  import  it 
to  this  country ;  but  they  prefer  to  remain  ignorant  of 
all  advances  that  are  made  in  the  very  business  in 
which  they  are  engaged. 

This  may  seem  to  be  an  overstatement ;  but  let  us 
consider  for  a  moment  a  single  detail  of  the  mere 
mechanism  of  the  theatre.  Everybody  knows  that  it  is 
desirable,  for  a  multitude  of  reasons,  to  equip  the  thea- 
tre in  such  a  way  as  to  be  able  to  supplant  one  stage- 
set  with  another  in  a  few  seconds.  Throughout  the 
last  ten  years,  this  purpose  has  been  accomplished  in 
Germany  by  three  different  devices, — namely,  the  re- 
volving stage,  or  drehbiihne;  the  sliding  stage,  or  shiebe- 
biihne;  and  the  rolling  stage,  or  wagenbuhne.  Any 
American  theatre-manager  might  study  the  respective 
merits  of  these  three  devices  in  a  single  day.  Yet,  in  this 
country,  we  build  theatre  after  theatre  without  install- 
ing any  of  these  appliances  for  the  rapid  shifting  of 
scenery.  In  all  America,  there  are,  as  yet,  only  three 


SCENIC  SETTINGS  IN  AMERICA       227 

revolving  stages, — one  in  Oakland,  California ;  and  the 
other  two  at  the  Century  Theatre  and  the  Little  Thea- 
tre in  New  York,  both  of  which  were  projected  by  Mr. 
Winthrop  Ames. 

Take  another  matter  of  mere  mechanism, — the  mat- 
ter of  stage-lighting.  In  nearly  every  modern  German 
theatre,  the  stage  is  bounded  by  a  concrete  cyclorama, 
which  is  used  to  reflect  and  to  diffuse  the  light  that 
ultimately  irradiates  the  scene.  There  is  only  one 
theatre  in  New  York  which  is  provided  with  this  new 
appliance, — namely,  the  Neighborhood  Playhouse  in 
Grand  Street,  which  most  of  our  American  managers 
have  never  even  visited. 

During  the  last  ten  years,  nearly  every  important 
producing  manager  in  Europe  has  discarded  the  old 
method  of  illuminating  the  stage  from  a  trough  of  foot- 
lights, and  has  adopted  a  new  method  of  lighting  from 
the  top  and  from  the  sides.  In  New  York,  the  new 
method  of  illuminating  the  stage  was  clearly  exemplified, 
in  January,  1915,  by  Mr.  Granville  Barker;  but  thus 
far  it  has  been  adopted,  in  our  American  theatre,  only 
by  Mr.  David  Belasco.  When  the  curtain  rose  upon 
the  first  performance  of  The  Boomerang,  on  August  10, 
1915,  it  was  apparent  that  Mr.  Belasco  had  removed 
the  footlights  from  his  theatre  and  had  arranged  to 
illuminate  his  stage  from  the  top  and  from  the  sides. 
The  Boomerang  achieved  a  success  which  may  be  de- 
scribed without  hyperbole  as  record-breaking;  the  play 
has  been  seen  by  hundreds  of  thousands  of  people;  and 
Mr.  Belasco  has  proved,  by  the  sheer  enjoyment  of  the 
public,  that  the  new  method  of  stage-lighting  is  more 


efficacious  than  the  old.  Yet,  since  the  first  performance 
of  The  Boomerang,  no  other  American  manager  has 
adopted  the  new  method  of  stage-lighting  which  Mr. 
Belasco  has  so  successfully  employed;  and  it  may  seri- 
ously be  doubted  that  any  of  our  other  managers  have 
even  taken  the  trouble  to  study  the  devices  by  which 
Mr.  Belasco  has  achieved  his  fine  effects. 

In  the  matter  of  stage-setting  and  stage-lighting,  our 
American  theatre  is  loitering  many  years  behind  the 
times.  Speaking  generally,  our  theatre  is  still  linger- 
ing in  the  Victorian — or  horsehair — period;  as  yet,  it 
has  scarcely  felt  the  impress  of  that  modern  movement 
which  is  known  as  the  "  new  stagecraft." 

n 

The  movement  known  as  the  "  new  stagecraft  "  has 
been  so  long  established  on  the  continent  of  Europe  that 
only  in  America  can  it  literally  be  considered  "  new." 
It  began,  about  fifteen  years  ago,  as  a  protest  against 
the  ultra-realism  of  the  preceding  period.  At  the  very 
end  of  the  nineteenth  century,  the  drama  was  prevail- 
ingly a  realistic  drama ;  the  appliances  of  the  theatre  of 
that  period  were  appropriately  suited  to  the  drama  of 
the  time;  but  realism  was  so  thoroughly  established  in 
the  drama  that  even  those  authors  who  preferred  to 
write  romantic  or  poetic  plays  were  required  to  have 
their  plays  produced  in  a  realistic  manner.  Inevitably, 
therefore,  the  "  new  stagecraft "  began  as  a  revolt 
against  this  utterly  illogical  requirement. 

The  theatre  may  appeal  to  the  public  in  either  of  two 
ways, — first,  by  imitation  of  the  actual,  and  second,  by 


SCENIC  SETTINGS  IN  AMERICA       229 

suggestion  of  the  real.  The  first  method  is  realistic,  for 
it  requires  in  the  public  a  process  of  inductive  thought ; 
the  second  method  is  romantic,  for  it  requires  in  the 
public  a  process  of  deductive  thought.  The  apostles  of 
the  "  new  stagecraft  " — while  willing  to  leave  to  the 
realistic  drama  the  methods  of  the  realistic  theatre — 
demanded  that  a  new  romantic  theatre  should  be  devised 
to  cope  with  the  requirements  of  a  new  romantic  drama. 

The  subject  is,  in  general,  so  large  that  only  a  single 
aspect  can  profitably  be  discussed  in  the  course  of  the 
present  chapter.  Let  us  choose,  for  convenience,  to 
examine  the  attitude  of  the  apostles  of  the  "  new  stage- 
craft "  toward  the  one  detail  of  scenic  setting.  The 
revolutionists  insisted  that  romantic  writers  should  be 
aided  by  an  absolute  release  from  the  encumbrance  of 
realistic  scenery. 

They  demanded,  first,  that  scenes  which  were  not 
definitely  localized  by  the  dramatist  in  place  and  time 
should  not  be  definitely  localized  by  the  superimposition 
of  scenery  and  properties.  In  staging  Shakespeare, 
for  example,  they  insisted  that  scenes  which  were 
written  to  be  acted  on  an  empty  fore-stage  should  be 
acted  on  an  empty  apron.  But,  secondly,  they  de- 
manded also  that,  in  the  scenery  itself,  the  basis  of 
appeal  should  be,  not  imitation,  but  suggestion. 

For  the  detailed,  pictorial  scenery  of  the  preceding 
period  they  substituted  scenery  which  was  summary 
and  decorative.  Instead  of  cluttering  the  stage  with 
actual  details,  they  contrived  to  suggest  the  desired 
scene  by  an  appropriate  design  composed  of  lines  and 
lights  and  colors.  It  was  discovered,  for  example,  that 


230     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

green  curtains  drooping  in  tall  folds  and  illuminated 
with  a  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land  would  sug- 
gest a  better  Forest  of  Arden  than  any  imitative  jumble 
of  cotton  rocks  and  canvas  trees.  It  was  discovered, 
also,  that  even  for  the  uses  of  the  realistic  drama,  a 
simple  design  of  leading  lines  and  elementary  colors 
was  more  suggestive  of  the  desired  illusion  of  reality 
than  a  helter-skelter  gathering  of  actual  furniture  and 
actual  properties. 

In  two  important  particulars,  the  "  new  manner  "  of 
scenic  setting  proved  itself  superior  to  the  old;  for, 
first,  it  was  more  imaginative,  and,  second,  it  was  more 
economical.  The  first  point  was  particularly  interest- 
ing to  the  audience ;  the  second,  to  the  manager. 

People  go  to  the  theatre  to  enjoy  themselves: — that 
is  to  say,  their  own  participation  in  the  play.  They 
cannot  really  relish  a  performance  until  it  ceases  to 
seem  to  happen  on  the  stage  and  begins  to  seem  to 
happen  in  their  own  imaginations.  A  play,  therefore, 
is  effective  in  proportion  to  the  extent  to  which  it 
excites  an  imaginative  contribution  from  the  minds  of 
those  who  see  it.  The  old  realistic  scenery  left  the  audi- 
ence nothing  to  do,  for  everything  had  been  already 
done  upon  the  stage.  The  new  suggestive  scenery  is 
more  enjoyable,  because  it  permits  the  spectators  to 
create  within  their  own  imaginations  an  appreciable 
contribution  to  the  total  work  of  art. 

Furthermore,  the  second  great  advantage  of  the 
idecorative  type  of  scenery  is  that  it  is  considerably 
less  expensive  than  the  detailed,  pictorial  type  of  the 
preceding  period.  Here  is  a  point  which  surely  should 


SCENIC  SETTINGS  IN  AMERICA       231 

appeal  to  our  American  managers,  since  they  pride 
themselves  on  being  business  men.  It  is  assuredly  un- 
businesslike to  perpetuate  an  old  fashion  when  it  costs 
much  more  to  do  so  than  it  would  cost  to  adopt  a  new 
fashion  which  is  manifestly  better. 

in 

Despite  the  inertia  of  the  tired  business  men  who 
control  the  great  majority  of  our  theatres,  it  is  an 
interesting  fact  that,  whenever  the  new  type  of  scenery 
has  been  exhibited  in  America,  it  has  been  enthusiasti- 
cally welcomed  by  the  public.  When  Mr.  Winthrop 
Ames  imported  Reinhardt's  Sumurun,  the  public  was 
emphatically  pleased;  and  an  approval  which  was  even 
more  emphatic  was  accorded  to  Mr.  Granville  Barker's 
productions  of  The  Man  Who  Married  a  Dumb  Wife 
and  Androcles  and  the  Lion.  Our  public,  as  the  phrase 
is,  may  not  know  anything  about  art,  but  it  knows  what 
it  likes ;  and  it  likes  the  scenery  designed  by  Bakst  and 
Golovine  for  the  Russian  Ballet  that  recently  has  visited 
the  leading  cities  of  this  country. 

But  our  managers  might  reply  that,  in  America,  we 
lack  the  necessary  artists  to  carry  the  new  movement 
to  success.  This  objection,  if  it  should  be  made,  would 
merely  be  a  proof  of  ignorance.  We  have  many  fine 
artists,  trained  particularly  for  the  work  of  scenic 
decoration ;  they  are  merely  waiting  for  further  op- 
portunities to  be  employed.  Setting  aside  Mr.  Josef 
Urban,  who,  though  resident  in  America,  is  an  Austrian 
by  birth,  we  have  Mr.  Livingston  Platt,  Mr.  Sam  Hume, 
Mr.  Robert  E.  Jones,  Mr.  Robert  McQuinn,  Mr.  Wil- 


232     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

Ham  Penhallow  Henderson,  Mrs.  O'Kane  Conwell,  Miss 
Helen  Dryden,  and  many  others,  including  the  associ- 
ated artists  of  the  Washington  Square  Players,  who 
have  already  shown  what  they  can  do  whenever  an 
opportunity  has  been  accorded  to  them.  Mr.  Jones 
has  studied  with  Reinhardt,  Mr.  Hume  has  studied  with 
Gordon  Craig,  Mr.  Platt  has  studied  art  in  Bruges. 
All  these  artists  are  thoroughly  prepared  to  design 
the  new  type  of  scenic  settings. 

The  work  of  Mr.  Urban  is  already  well  known  in  our 
theatre,  because  of  the  initiative  of  Mr.  George  C. 
Tyler ;  and  he  is  now  employed  by  managers  so  diverse 
in  the  intent  of  their  productions  as  Mr.  Erlanger,  Mr. 
Ziegfeld,  and  Mr.  Hackett.  Mr.  Jones  was  given  his 
first  chance  by  Mr.  Granville  Barker,  and  was  sub- 
sequently retained  by  Mr.  Arthur  Hopkins ;  and  Mr. 
Platt  has  been  employed  by  that  far-seeing  manager, 
Miss  Anglin.  Mr.  McQuinn  was  taken  up  by  Mr. 
Dillingham  and  allowed  to  design  the  lovely  scenery  of 
several  of  his  spectacles.  But,  despite  these  intimations 
of  an  ultimate  triumph  of  the  new  art  in  our  American 
theatre,  nine-tenths  of  all  our  plays  are  still  encum- 
bered with  the  lumbering  investiture  of  a  fashion  that  is 
now  a  decade  out  of  date. 


XXV 

THE  NEW  STAGECRAFT 


IN  the  movement  known  as  "  the  new  stagecraft " 
there  is  really  nothing  new.  The  apparent  innovations 
of  this  movement  arise  merely  from  the  resumption  of 
many  conventions  as  old  as  the  theatre  itself,  which 
were  injudiciously  discarded  less  than  half  a  century 
ago.  The  purpose  of  "  the  new  stagecraft  "  is  to  effect 
a  working  compromise  between  the  methods  of  the  plat- 
form stage  and  the  methods  of  the  picture-frame  stage, 
so  that  the  merits  of  both  shall  survive  and  their  defects 
be  nullified.  The  intention  of  the  leaders  of  this  move- 
ment is  not  to  erect  a  new  ideal ;  it  is  merely  to  reconcile 
two  different  ideals,  each  of  which  has  shown  itself  to 
be  of  service  in  the  past.  Shakespeare  could  write  his 
plays  only  for  a  platform  theatre ;  Ibsen  could  write  his 
plays  only  for  a  picture-frame  theatre ;  but,  if  the  advo- 
cates of  "  the  new  stagecraft  "  can  effect  the  compro- 
mise that  constitutes  their  program,  the  playwright  of 
to-morrow  will  be  allowed  to  write  his  plays  for  either 
type  of  theatre,  or  for  a  combination  of  the  two. 

To  appreciate  this  compromise,  we  must  first  con- 
sider separately  the  different  merits  and  defects  of  both 

233 


234     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

factors  to  the  intended  reconciliation.  The  drama  was 
produced  upon  a  platform  stage  from  the  days  of 
^Eschylus  until  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. Though  the  theatres  of  Sophocles,  Plautus, 
Shakespeare,  Calderon,  Moliere,  and  Sheridan  differed 
greatly  in  detail,  they  remained  alike  in  their  essential 
features.  In  each  of  these  theatres  a  full  half  of  the 
stage  was  employed  as  a  bare  platform  surrounded  on 
three  sides  by  spectators.  For  this  projecting  platform 
it  is  most  convenient  to  employ  the  term  "  apron,"  by 
which  it  was  denominated  in  the  eighteenth  century. 
Any  scene  in  any  play  which  did  not  have  to  be  pre- 
cisely localized  in  place  and  time  was  always  acted  in 
the  apron.  Within  this  universal  ground,  certain  char- 
acters accomplished  certain  acts,  immune  from  any 
questioning  of  "  where  "  or  "  when."  The  actor  in  the 
apron  was  accepted  frankly  as  an  actor;  his  presence 
presupposed  the  presence  of  an  audience;  and  he  could 
address  himself  directly  to  the  spectators  who  sur- 
rounded him  on  three  sides.  At  the  same  time,  each  of 
these  theatres  provided  also  a  "  back  stage  " — dis- 
tinguished from  the  "  apron  " — in  which  it  was  pos- 
sible to  localize  events  in  place  and  time  by  some 
summary  arrangement  of  scenery  or  properties.  The 
background  of  this  secondary  stage  might  be  merely 
architectural,  as  in  the  theatre  of  Sophocles;  or  it 
might  be  decorated  with  a  painted  back-drop  and  wings, 
as  in  the  theatre  of  Sheridan.  In  any  case,  as  in  the 
theatre  of  Shakespeare,  it  could  be  employed  for  the 
exhibition  of  any  set-piece  of  stage-furniture  necessi- 
tated by  the  narrative.  Withdrawn  to  the  "  back 


THE  NEW  STAGECRAFT  235 

stage,"  the  actors  reduced  themselves  .to  component 
parts  of  a  general  stage-picture;  they  were  no  longer 
surrounded  by  spectators  on  three  sides ;  and,  to  ad- 
dress the  audience  directly,  they  had  to  step  out  of  the 
picture  and  advance  into  the  "  apron."  The  convention 
of  the  inner  and  outer  stage,  however,  permitted  the 
dramatist  to  alternate  at  will  between  eternity  and 
time,  between  somewhere  and  anywhere,  and  between  the 
employment  of  the  actor  as  an  orator  or  merely  as  a 
movable  detail  in  a  decorative  composition. 

The  development  of  the  picture-frame  proscenium  in 
the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century  signalized  the 
advent  of  a  different  conception  of  the  drama.  The 
"  apron  "  was  abolished ;  and  what  had  formerly  been 
the  "  back  stage  "  was  brought  forward,  and  expanded 
to  include  the  entire  domain  available  for  acting.  The 
whole  was  framed  in  a  proscenium  that  gave  it  the 
aspect  of  a  picture  hung  upon  a  wall.  For  the  first 
time  in  its  history  of  more  than  twenty  centuries,  the 
drama  was  conceived  as  a  drift  of  moving  pictures, 
assiduously  localized  in  place  and  time.  An  inviolable 
boundary  was  drawn  between  the  auditorium  and  the 
stage ;  and  theatrical  performances,  which  formerly  had 
been  projected,  so  to  speak,  in  three  dimensions,  were 
now  reduced  to  two.  The  drama  became  a  thing  at 
which  the  public  looked,  instead  of  a  thing  in  the  midst 
of  which  the  public  lived.  The  time-honored  convention 
which  had  permitted  the  actor  in  the  "  apron  "  to  ad- 
dress the  audience  frankly  as  an  actor  was  swept  away 
with  the  platform  stage  that  had  rendered  this  con- 
vention simple  and  natural;  and,  as  a  consequence  of 


236     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

this  revolution,  the  soliloquy  and  the  aside  were  dis- 
carded. For  the  first  time  the  drama  became  primarily 
a  visual,  instead  of  an  auditory,  art.  Conviction  was 
carried  to  the  eye,  by  an  arrangement  of  actual  details 
behind  the  picture-frame  proscenium,  instead  of  to  the 
ear,  by  the  literary  appeal  of  lines  delivered  from  the 
"  apron."  The  gardens  of  Portia's  Belmont  were  no 
longer  suggested  by  the  poet's  eloquence;  they  were 
rendered  to  the  eye,  and  not  the  ear,  by  an  artist  other 
than  the  author.  The  drama,  in  other  words,  became 
essentially  a  special  sort  of  painting  instead  of  a  special 
sort  of  literature. 

This  new  concept  of  a  play  as  a  thing  to  be  seen 
instead  of  a  thing  to  be  listened  to  was  developed  at 
a  time  when  realism  happened  to  be  rampant  in  all  the 
arts.  Whatever  traditional  conventions  of  the  theatre 
were  anti-realistic  were,  in  consequence,  summarily  dis- 
carded. The  actor  was  no  longer  permitted  to  pre- 
suppose the  presence  of  an  audience;  he  was  required 
to  comport  himself  as  if  he  were  living  in  life  instead 
of  acting  in  a  play.  He  could  never  address  a  public 
imagined  to  be  non-existent :  hence  he  could  never  utter 
a  soliloquy  or  an  aside.  He  was  required  at  all  mo- 
ments to  "  see  himself  "  (as  actors  say)  as  a  component 
part  of  a  picture,  instead  of  addressing  a  gathered 
audience  with  ears  to  hear.  This  new  convention  of 
the  theatre  has  been  best  defined  by  Mr.  Henry  Arthur 
Jones  as  the  "  eavesdropping  convention," — "  the  con- 
vention which  charges  playgoers  half-a-crown  or  half- 
a-guinea  for  pretending  to  remove  the  fourth  wall, 
and  pretending  to  give  them  an  opportunity  of  spying 


THE  NEW  STAGECRAFT  237 

upon  actual  life,  and  seeing  everything  just  as  it 
happens." 

The  "  eavesdropping  convention  "  rendered  an  un- 
precedented service  to  the  realistic  drama ;  for  realism 
is  the  art  of  inducing  an  apprehension  of  truth  from 
an  imitation  of  facts.  For  imitating  facts,  for  localiz- 
ing a  story  both  in  place  and  in  time,  for  reproducing 
the  very  look  of  actuality,  the  picture-frame  theatre 
was  so  superior  to  the  platform  theatre  that,  in  a 
single  generation,  it  drove  its  predecessor  out  of  usage. 
But,  while  this  sudden,  overwhelming  triumph  of  the 
pictorial,  non-literary  concept  of  the  drama  made  easier 
the  composition  and  production  of  realistic  plays,  it  set 
unprecedented  difficulties  in  the  path  of  writers  of 
romantic  plays, — the  sort  of  plays  that  refuse  to  be 
confined  within  set  limits  of  place  and  time,  and  depend 
for  their  effect  more  upon  the  imaginative  suggestion 
of  their  lines  than  upon  the  imitation  of  actuality  in 
their  investiture.  Though  a  precise  and  accurate  scenic 
setting  behind  a  picture-frame  proscenium  was  an  aid 
to  Ibsen,  who  wrote  realistic  plays,  it  was  only  an 
encumbrance  to  Shakespeare,  who  wrote  romantic  plays 
intended  for  a  platform  stage. 

It  occurred,  therefore,  to  the  advocates  of  that  latest 
movement  we  are  now  examining  that  some  compromise 
should  be  effected  which,  while  rendering  to  the  realists 
the  manifest  advantages  of  picture-frame  production, 
should  also  reassert  for  the  romantics  the  no  less  mani- 
fest advantages  of  production  on  a  platform  stage. 
They  decided  to  readopt  the  "  apron,"  with  all  the 
free  conventions  that  depend  upon  its  use;  and,  at  the 


238     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

same  time,  to  embellish  the  "  back  stage  "  with  decora- 
tions sufficiently  pictorial  to  satisfy  the  eye  of  a  public 
grown  accustomed  to  the  visual  appeal  of  the  realistic 
drama. 

In  the  English-speaking  theatre,  the  most  notable 
exponent  of  "  the  new  stagecraft "  is  Mr.  Granville 
Barker;  and,  for  a  further  elucidation  of  this  move- 
ment, we  need  only  examine  in  detail  the  method  of 
Mr.  Barker's  productions  of  the  plays  of  Shakespeare. 
For  these  productions,  Mr.  Barker  has  constructed  a 
new  type  of  inner  and  outer  stage.  An  "  apron,"  sev- 
eral feet  in  depth,  projects  before  the  curtain,  and 
descends  in  terraced  steps  to  the  floor  of  the  auditorium. 
This  platform  is  accessible  from  either  side,  by  en- 
trances made  available  by  the  suppression  of  the  two 
stage-boxes  of  the  theatre.  Upon  this  "  apron,"  in 
frank  and  utter  intimacy  with  the  audience,  are  en- 
acted all  scenes  that  are  not  precisely  localized  in  place 
or  time,  or  that  do  not  demand  the  employment  of  set- 
pieces  of  stage-furniture.  Such  other  scenes  as  require 
a  pictorial  environment  are  enacted  on  the  "  back 
sfage,"  or  on  a  full  stage  constituted  by  an  imaginary 
obliteration  of  the  boundary  that  separates  this  "  back 
stage  "  from  the  "  apron."  The  "  back  stage,"  dis- 
closed behind  the  curtain,  is  framed  in  a  rectilinear 
proscenium  of  gold.  Whatever  scenery  is  used  is  set 
within  this  frame,  at  the  extreme  rear  of  the  stage. 
Mr.  Barker's  scenery  is  summary  rather  than  precise, 
decorative  rather  than  pictorial.  It  attains  its  effect 
not  by  imitation  of  the  actual  but  by  suggestion  of  the 
real.  It  is  so  simple  that  it  can  be  shifted  in  a  few 


THE  NEW  STAGECRAFT  239 

seconds;  and,  by  virtue  of  this  fact,  the  decorative 
aspect  of  the  "  back  stage "  can  be  altered  at  any 
moment  without  interrupting  the  continuance  of  the 
dramatic  narrative.  No  footlights  are  employed  on 
Mr.  Barker's  platform:  the  stage  is  illuminated  from 
above  by  artificial  light,  just  as,  in  the  Elizabethan 
theatre,  it  was  illuminated  from  above  by  natural  light. 
His  performances  seem  to  be  rendered  not  in  two  dimen- 
sions but  in  three ;  and  a  person  seated  in  the  orchestra 
is  made  to  feel  more  like  a  participant  in  the  business 
of  the  play  than  a  mere  spectator  of  what  is  going  on. 

n 

It  is  an  axiom  that  the  structure  of  the  drama  in 
any  period  is  conditioned  by  the  structure  of  the  theatre 
in  that  period;  for,  to  get  his  work  before  the  public, 
the  dramatist  must  make  his  plays  in  such  a  fashion 
that  they  will  fit  the  sort  of  theatre  that  is  ready  to 
receive  them.  He  cannot  plan  his  plays  for  an  un- 
known theatre  of  the  future ;  and,  if  he  is  wise,  he  will 
not  plan  them  for  some  forgotten  theatre  of  the  past. 
The  problem  of  making  a  play  for  the  Theatre  of 
Dionysus  in  Athens  was  very  different  from  the  prob- 
lem of  making  a  play  for  the  Little  Theatre  in  New 
York;  and  this  difference  in  the  fundamental  problem 
accounts  for  all  the  myriad  minor  points  of  disagree- 
ment between  the  dramaturgic  craft  of  Sophocles  and 
the  dramaturgic  craft  of  Mr.  Galsworthy. 

It  would  be  utterly  unfair  to  Mr.  Galsworthy  to  pro- 
duce The  Pigeon  before  twenty  thousand  spectators  in 
an  open-air  auditorium  carved  out  of  the  sunlit  hollow 


240     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

of  a  hill ;  and  it  would  be  almost  equally  unfair  to 
Sophocles  to  produce  (Edipus  the  King  on  a  tiny  stage 
before  three  hundred  people  seated  in  a  roofed  and 
lighted  drawing-room.  The  dramaturgic  craftsman- 
ship of  any  play  can  be  appreciated  only  when  the  play 
is  produced  with  some  approximation  to  the  physical 
conditions  of  the  type  of  theatre  for  which  it  was 
originally  fashioned. 

This  point  is  so  absolutely  obvious  that  even  to  men- 
tion it  in  passing  might  appear  to  be  unnecessary, 
were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  the  dramaturgic  art  of 
Shakespeare  has  suffered  sorely  from  a  lack  of  recog- 
nition of  this  fundamental  principle.  Shakespeare 
was  undeniably  a  great  dramatist,  and,  at  his  best,  he 
was  probably  the  greatest  of  all  time ;  but  he  was  a 
dramatist  of  the  sixteenth  century,  and  not  of  the 
seventeenth  or  the  eighteenth  or  the  nineteenth  or  the 
twentieth.  He  fashioned  his  plays  to  fit  a  type  of 
theatre  which  was  legislated  out  of  existence  by  the 
Roundhead  Parliament  of  1642;  and,  ever  since  the 
restoration  of  the  English  stage  in  1660,  his  plays  have 
been  hashed  and  harried,  in  an  effort  to  make  them  fit 
a  more  modern  type  of  theatre  for  which  they  had 
never  been  intended. 

The  physical  conditions  of  the  Globe  Theatre  on  the 
Bankside  have  been  explained  so  frequently  in  recent 
years  that  they  need  not  be  expounded  in  the  present 
context.  The  essential  fact  to  be  inculcated  is  that  the 
Elizabethan  theatre  afforded  to  the  dramatist  the  ut- 
most liberty  in  handling  the  categories  of  time  and 
place.  No  scenes,  in  any  way,  were  definitely  localized 


THE  NEW  STAGECRAFT  241 

except  such  scenes  as  were  set  upon  the  full-stage,  with 
a  summary  background  of  furniture  and  properties. 
Shakespeare  never  pigeon-holed  a  scene  in  either  place 
or  time  unless  he  needed  to ;  and,  whenever  it  was  really 
necessary  to  anchor  an  incident  in  actuality,  he  re- 
enforced  the  effect  of  his  meager  scenery  by  describing 
the  desired  setting  elaborately  in  the  lines.  The  custom 
of  his  period  required  him  to  rely  with  greater  confi- 
dence on  the  appeal  to  the  ear  than  on  the  appeal  to 
the  eye. 

Furthermore,  Shakespeare  could  change  his  place 
and  change  his  time  as  often  as  he  wished,  by  the  simple 
expedient  of  emptying  his  stage  and  then  repeopling  it 
with  other  characters.  Because  of  this  advantage,  he 
could  build  his  plays  not  in  five  acts,  nor  in  four  or 
three,  but  in  an  uncounted  sequence  of  scenes.  The 
arbitrary  division  of  each  of  Shakespeare's  plays  into 
five  acts,  with  which  the  modern  reader  is  familiar,  was 
imposed  upon  the  playwright  by  his  eighteenth-century 
editors,  who,  knowing  nothing  about  the  Elizabethan 
theatre  and  assuming  that  every  good  play  must  be 
constructed  in  five  acts,  presumed  to  cut  up  Shake- 
speare's narrative  in  the  interests  of  a  falsely  founded 
theory.  There  is  every  reason  to  suppose,  however, 
that  the  plays  of  Shakespeare  were  originally  acted, 
from  the  outset  to  the  end,  without  any  intermission; 
for  otherwise  it  would  be  impossible  to  understand  the 
famous  phrase  in  the  prologue  of  Romeo  and  Juliet 
about  "  the  two  hours'  traffic  of  our  stage."  In  this 
connection,  it  may  be  interesting  to  point  out  that, 
though  the  narrative  structure  of  the  Elizabethan 


242     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

drama  differs  radically  from  that  of  the  contemporary 
play,  it  coincides  almost  exactly  with  that  of  the  con- 
temporary moving-picture.  Our  moving-pictures,  with 
their  swift  facility  for  changing  time  and  place,  and 
their  equipment  for  the  easy  exhibition  of  a  story  in  an 
uncounted  sequence  of  scenes,  have  carried  us  back  to 
the  freedom  and  amplitude  of  narrative  that  was  en- 
joyed by  Shakespeare. 

This  freedom  and  amplitude  have  been  sacrificed  by 
the  modern  theatre  for  the  sake  of  an  assiduous  defini- 
tion of  details  in  place  and  time.  Our  modern  plays 
are  no  longer  constructed  in  an  uncounted  sequence  of 
scenes :  they  are  arranged — less  fluently  but  much  more 
solidly — in  three  or  four  acts,  in  accordance  with  a 
careful  time-scheme  and  with  the  uttermost  economy 
of  place.  Each  act  is  anchored  heavily  in  actuality, 
by  realistic  scenery,  realistic  furniture,  realistic  prop- 
erties, and  artificial  lighting  that  is  suited  realistically 
to  the  time-table  of  the  narrative. 

Great  plays  have  been  written  for  this  modern  theatre 
by  the  meditative  giant  of  the  north,  and  by  a  host  of 
Ibsen's  tall  successors  in  nearly  every  nation  of  the 
breathing  world ;  but  the  merit  of  these  plays  has  been 
totally  different,  in  its  technical  basis,  from  the  merit 
of  the  plays  of  Shakespeare.  To  produce  Hedda 
Gabler  or  The  Thunderbolt  in  the  Globe  Theatre  on  the 
Bankside,  in  accordance  with  the  customs  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan stage,  would  be  to  rob  these  modern  plays  of  all 
their  meaning.  And,  similarly,  to  produce  the  plays  of 
Shakespeare  in  accordance  with  the  customs  of  our 
modern  realistic  stage,  with  its  picture-frame  pro- 


THE  NEW  STAGECRAFT  243 

scenium  and  its  meticulous  arrangement  of  a  story  in 
little  labeled  pigeon-holes  of  place  and  time,  is  to  clip 
the  wings  of  one  accustomed  to  soar  through  an  il- 
limitable void. 

Toward  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  century,  when 
realism  was  rampant  in  the  theatre,  an  immense  indig- 
nity was  done  to  the  dramaturgic  craftsmanship  of 
Shakespeare.  In  this  period,  those  passages  which 
Shakespeare  had  airily  devised  to  be  acted  on  the  fore- 
stage,  "  out  of  place,  out  of  time,"  were  presented  on  a 
stage  encumbered  with  realistic  scenery  which  pinned 
them  down  to  a  definite  place  and  a  definite  hour.  The 
leader  of  this  momentary  heresy  toward  a  realistic 
presentation  of  an  essentially  romantic  dramatist  was 
the  great  actor,  Sir  Henry  Irving.  In  Irving's  pro- 
duction of  Romeo  and  Juliet,  when  Mercutio  spoke  his 
dying  quip,  saying  humorously  that  his  wound  was 
"  not  so  deep  as  a  well  nor  so  wide  as  a  church  door," 
he  waved  his  right  hand  and  his  left  at  an  actual  well 
and  an  actual  church  door  which  were  standing  on  the 
stage.  By  this  exhibition  of  the  actual,  the  audience 
was  imperiously  prevented  from  imagining  the  real. 

The  method  of  Sir  Henry  Irving,  which  was  sup- 
ported in  America  by  the  late  Augustin  Daly,  was 
maintained  until  his  death  by  Sir  Herbert  Beer- 
bohm  Tree.  Sir  Herbert,  in  producing  the  platform 
plays  of  Shakespeare,  drowned  the  stage  with  realistic 
scenery,  assiduously  localizing  incidents  which  were 
meant  to  be  unlocdized  in  either  place  or  time.  Like 
Daly,  and  like  Irving  before  him,  he  cut  and  rear- 
ranged Shakespeare's  text  in  order  to  make  it  fit  the 


244     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

modern  realistic  stage,  and  sacrificed  the  swift  sweep 
of  the  Elizabethan  narrative  in  order  to  reduce  it  to 
conformity  with  the  conventions  of  the  Victorian 
theatre. 

If  any  lasting  service  can  be  done  to  Shakespeare, 
this  service  should  take  the  form  of  a  rehabilitation  of 
his  own  familiar  art  upon  the  stage.  The  only  way  in 
which  his  art  can  fairly  be  restored  to  its  pristine 
freshness  and  its  pristine  vigor  is  by  a  presentation  of 
his  plays  with  due  regard  to  the  conventions  of  the 
sort  of  theatre  for  which  they  were  originally  fashioned. 
We  should  resolve  henceforward  to  produce  the  greatest 
of  the  great  Elizabethans  as  an  Elizabethan  dramatist, 
and  not  as  a  Victorian  dramatist  or  as  a  competitor  of 
Mr.  Galsworthy  in  the  traffic  of  the  contemporary 
stage.  To  produce  a  play  of  Shakespeare's  with  modern 
realistic  scenery  is  just  as  absurd  as  to  present  the 
Prince  of  Denmark  in  a  top-hat  and  a  morning  coat  or 
to  exhibit  Julius  Caesar  with  a  wrist-watch  and  a  khaki 
uniform.  Just  as  a  good  servant  knows  his  place,  a 
good  play  should  be  permitted  to  demonstrate  a  knowl- 
edge of  its  time. 

A  vigorous  move  in  the  right  direction  was  made  in 
1916  by  the  Drama  Society  in  its  notable  production  of 
The  Tempest,  under  the  direction  of  Mr.  Louis  Calvert 
and  Mr.  John  Corbin.  This  production  was  planned  in 
accordance  with  conditions  which  approximated  the 
liberties  and  limitations  with  which  Shakespeare  was 
confronted. 

This  play  must  be  produced  on  an  Elizabethan  stage 
or  not  at  all.  Its  requirements  are  utterly  at  vari- 


THE  NEW  STAGECRAFT  245 

ance  with  the  conventions  of  the  realistic  theatre;  and 
this  is  the  main  reason  why,  in  recent  years,  The 
Tempest  has  rarely  been  produced.  The  story  is  spun 
of  "  such  stuff  as  dreams  are  made  on."  The  incidents 
occur,  as  in  a  dream,  "  out  of  place,  out  of  time."  To 
anchor  this  fantastic  narrative  in  actuality,  according 
to  the  method  of  Augustin  Daly  or  Sir  Herbert  Tree,  is 
to  force  it  to  compete  unfairly  with  the  modern  real- 
istic drama.  But  Mr.  Corbin  and  Mr.  Calvert  chose 
wisely  to  afford  this  Elizabethan  relic  the  advantage 
of  a  production  in  accordance  with  the  chief  require- 
ments of  the  Elizabethan  stage. 

When  the  curtain  rose,  it  disclosed  a  counterpart 
of  the  stage  of  Shakespeare's  theatre ;  and  on  this  stage 
the  entire  text  was  spoken,  without  interruption  and 
without  rearrangement.  No  cuts  whatever  were  made, 
except  for  the  excision  of  a  few  words  and  a  few  lines 
here  and  there  which,  to  the  oversqueamish  modern  ear, 
might  sound  indelicate.  Yet  the  performance  was  run 
through  in  a  little  over  two  hours,  because  there  were 
no  intermissions,  except  for  a  single  interval  of  fifteen 
minutes,  which  was  introduced  arbitrarily  to  afford 
the  restless  modern  auditor  an  opportunity  for  a  smoke 
in  the  lobby.  The  narrative  gained  greatly  from  this 
continuity.  The  fantastic  story  of  The  Tempest  de- 
mands a  drifting  fluency  of  narrative;  and  to  inter- 
rupt the  text  with  many  intermissions,  as  Augustin 
Daly  did,  is  to  release  the  auditor  irrevocably  from  the 
spell  of  Prospero's  enchantment. 

The  Elizabethan  drama  was  more  imaginative  than 
ours,  for  the  simple  reason  that  the  Elizabethan  stage 


246     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

demanded  from  the  spectator  a  greater  and  more  con- 
scious contribution  of  imaginative  receptivity.  The 
modern  dramatist  says,  "  Two  and  two  make  four,"  and 
the  modern  auditor  agrees  with  him,  saying  to  himself 
subconsciously,  "  I've  often  thought  that  very  thing 
myself."  Herein  we  see  the  source  of  the  appeal  of 
Pinero  and  Galsworthy  and  Shaw.  But  the  Elizabethan 
dramatist  said,  "  You  see  this  orange?  .  .  .  Let  us  now 
pretend  it  is  the  twirling  world ;  and  let  us  next  imagine 
that  we  blink  like  throned  stars  upon  that  mutable  and 
restless  planet " ;  and  the  Elizabethan  auditor  took 
wings,  and  made  himself  a  god  by  contemplation  of  an 
orange.  Herein  we  see  the  source  of  the  appeal  of 
Shakespeare. 

The  ship  scene  with  which  The  Tempest  opens  is 
ineffective  on  the  modern  stage,  because  no  mimic  ship- 
wreck can  compete  with  actuality;  but  it  is  very 
effective  on  the  rehabilitated  Elizabethan  stage,  because 
it  casts  all  actuality  aside  and  appeals  to  the  desire 
of  the  audience  to  contribute  an  imagination  of  the  real. 
In  presenting  such  a  narrative,  it  is  more  difficult, 
and  less  effective,  to  rock  the  stage  than  to  suggest  a 
rocking  of  the  mind  by  a  helter-skelter  of  the  lines. 

By  virtue  of  these  principles,  and  by  virtue  also  of  the 
fact  that  the  actors  were  excellently  chosen,  the  recent 
exhibition  of  The  Tempest  was  genuinely  entertaining. 
This  fact  seems  all  the  more  remarkable  when  we  re- 
member that  The  Tempest  is  a  bad  play  and  by  no 
means  a  monumental  poem.  Of  dramatic  merit  it  is 
almost  void,  and  in  literary  merit  it  sinks  considerably 
below  the  works  of  Shakespeare's  prime.  This  may 


THE  NEW  STAGECRAFT  247 

seem  a  shocking  thing  to  say  at  a  time  when  Shake- 
speare is  being  lauded  loudly  for  his  very  faults ;  but, 
some  time  or  other,  when  the  atmosphere  is  not  bethun- 
dered  with  unthinking  plaudits,  it  might  be  well  for 
some  critic  of  the  drama  to  condemn  the  exposition  of 
the  story  in  the  crude  and  tedious  narrative  of  Pros- 
pero  to  Miranda,  and  for  some  critic  of  poetic  art  to 
condemn  the  decadence  of  the  author's  verse  in  that 
later  period  when  he  trod  upon  the  heels  of  Fletcher 
in  the  new  and  devastating  habit  of  terminating  lines 
with  adjectives  and  prepositions  and  conjunctions. 


XXVI 
THE  LONG  RUN  IN  THE  THEATRE 

WE  have  become  so  accustomed  to  the  long  run  in 
recent  years  that  we  are  likely  to  forget  that  this  factor 
in  the  conduct  of  the  theatre  was  utterly  unknown 
until  the  last  half  century.  Euripides  often  wrote  a 
play  which  was  intended  to  be  acted  only  once,  and 
then  contentedly  went  home  and  wrote  another ;  yet 
many  of  his  tragedies  are  likely  to  be  remembered  longer 
than  Within  the  Law.  When  Shakespeare  first  pro- 
duced Hamlet  at  the  Globe  Theatre  in  1602,  we  may  be 
certain  that  he  never  expected  it  to  be  played  so  many 
as  a  hundred  times — not  a  hundred  times  consecutively, 
but  a  hundred  times  in  all,  before  it  was  finally  dis- 
carded and  forgotten.  Moliere  never  even  thought  of 
running  a  single  comedy  throughout  a  season,  however 
popular  the  comedy  might  be.  In  theatrical  memoirs 
of  the  eighteenth  century,  we  often  read  of  a  tragedy 
that  took  the  town  by  storm  and  was  acted  for  as  many 
as  ten  consecutive  nights,  or  of  a  comedy  that  proved 
itself  so  popular  that  it  had  to  be  repeated  no  less 
than  twenty  times  during  the  course  of  the  year.  So 
recently  as  1863,  in  our  own  country  of  America,  Les- 
ter Wallack's  Rosedale,  which  broke  all  preexistent 
records  for  popularity,  was  acted  only  one  hundred 

248 


THE  LONG  RUN  IN  THE  THEATRE     249 

and  twenty-five  times  during  the  first  twelve  months  of 
its  career.  Yet  nowadays,  in  New  York,  a  play  is 
commonly  regarded  as  a  failure  unless  it  runs  at  once 
for  at  least  a  hundred  consecutive  performances. 

The  development  of  the  long  run  in  the  last  fifty 
years  has  been  undoubtedly  determined  by  the  growth 
of  modern  cities  to  a  population  of  more  than  a  mil- 
lion ;  it  seems,  in  consequence,  a  natural  phenomenon ; 
but  our  present  familiarity  with  the  long  run  should 
not  lead  us  to  neglect  to  ask  whether  a  system  which 
permits  Peg  o'  My  Heart  to  run  consecutively  for  three 
years  is  really  more  salutary  to  the  drama  than  the 
system  which  inspired  the  composition  of  such  plays  as 
Othello,  Le  Misanthrope,  and  The  School  for  Scandal. 

Nobody  denies  that  the  long  run  is  a  bad  thing  for 
the  actors,  except  for  the  fact  that  they  are  thereby 
assured  of  continuous  employment  at  a  stated  salary. 
It  is  a  bad  thing  for  the  "  star  "  performers,  because 
any  histrionic  composition  is  likely  to  become  perfunc- 
tory if  it  is  repeated  for  more  than  a  hundred  con- 
secutive exhibitions ;  but  it  is  a  much  more  devastating 
thing  for  the  minor  actors,  who — condemned  to  spend 
a  year  in  repeating  inconsiderable  "  bits  " — miss  the 
needed  opportunity  for  experience  and  training  in  a 
wide  variety  of  parts. 

From  the  financial  point  of  view,  the  long  run  is  a 
good  thing  for  the  author,  since  it  permits  him  to  make 
a  fortune  from  a  single  play — a  consummation  that 
was  never  possible  at  any  previous  period  in  the  history 
of  the  drama.  Thomas  Heywood,  a  successful  Eliza- 
bethan playwright,  was  paid  three  pounds  for  his  best 


250     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

play,  A  Woman  Killed  with  Kindness;  and,  allowing 
for  the  increase  in  the  purchasing  power  of  money  in 
the  last  three  hundred  years,  this  sum  would  now 
amount  to  about  seventy-five  dollars.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  may  reasonably  be  conjectured  that  Mr.  Roi 
Cooper  Megrue  will  earn  at  least  one  hundred  thousand 
dollars  with  Under  Cover, — a  play  which,  despite  its 
many  merits,  is  not  likely  to  be  remembered  for  three 
centuries. 

But,  though  the  theatre  is  now — as  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson  remarked — a  "  gold-mine  "  for  the  author, 
the  long  run  is  disadvantageous  to  the  dramatist  from 
another — and  perhaps  a  more  important — point  of 
view.  Under  our  present  system,  the  author  is  con- 
demned to  try  for  a  long  run,  whether  he  wants  to  or 
not;  for  scarcely  any  manager  is  willing  to  produce  a 
play  that  does  not  seem  likely  to  run  for  at  least  a  hun- 
dred nights.  To  seize  an  illustration  from  the  analogous 
art  of  the  novel,  our  present  system  in  the  theatre  con- 
demns all  our  authors  to  emulate  Harold  Bell  Wright 
or  Gene  Stratton-Porter,  and  forbids  them  absolutely 
to  emulate  George  Meredith  or  Henry  James. 

Whether  or  not  the  long  run  is  a  good  thing  for 
the  manager  is  a  question  more  difficult  to  answer. 
Under  our  present  system,  the  average  manager  pro- 
duces five  new  plays  in  the  course  of  a  season.  He 
hopes  that  one  of  these  may  run  a  year ;  and  he  experts, 
from  the  profits  of  this  one  production — whichever  it 
may  be — to  liquidate  the  losses  of  the  other  four,  and 
thus  to  finish  the  year  on  the  right  side  of  the  ledger. 
Any  play  which  does  not,  almost  immediately,  show 


THE  LONG  RUN  IN  THE  THEATRE     251 

signs  of  settling  down  for  an  entire  season's  run  is 
summarily  discarded  within  a  period  that  varies  from 
two  weeks  to  six  weeks  from  the  date  of  the  original 
performance. 

This  system — to  borrow  an  analogy  from  the  game 
of  roulette — is  similar  to  the  system  of  backing  five 
successive  single  numbers  and  hoping  that  one  of  them 
may  win,  instead  of  playing  more  safely  with  a  series 
of  five  even  chances  on  the  red  and  black.  One  of  the 
most  intelligent  of  our  American  theatrical  managers 
said  recently  to  the  present  writer,  "  Our  theatre  busi- 
ness is  not  a  business  at  all ;  it  is  only  a  gamble."  The 
main  trouble  with  the  business  of  our  theatre  at  the 
present  time  is  that  it  is  utterly  unbusinesslike. 

There  are  two  ways  of  embarking  on  a  money-making 
enterprise.  One  way — the  sound,  commercial  way — is 
to  manufacture  one  hundred  articles  and  to  sell  them 
at  a  profit  of  two  dollars  each.  The  other  way — the 
dangerous  and  gambling  way — is  to  manufacture  one 
hundred  articles,  to  sell  one  of  them  at  a  profit  of  four 
hundred  dollars,  and  to  sell  the  other  ninety-nine  at  a 
loss  of  two  dollars  each.  From  the  first  of  these 
hypothetical  transactions,  the  business  man  will  earn  a 
profit  of  two  hundred  dollars ;  from  the  second,  he  will 
earn  a  profit  of  two  hundred  and  two  dollars ;  but 
everybody  will  agree  that  the  first  transaction  is  "  busi- 
ness "  and  that  the  second  is  "  only  a  gamble." 

If  our  theatre  business  at  the  present  day  is  "  only 
a  gamble,"  it  is  because  our  managers  have  made  it  so, 
by  trying  always  for  long  runs.  The  main  trouble 
with  our  commercial  managers  appears  to  be  that  they 


252     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

are  not  sufficiently  commercial.  They  try,  over  and 
over  again,  to  hit  upon  "  the  one  best  bet,"  instead  of 
investing  their  money  more  conservatively. 

Let  us  imagine  for  a  moment  that  all  the  publishers 
in  America,  with  two  or  three  exceptions,  should  decide 
to-morrow  never  to  print  another  book  outside  that 
field  of  fiction  that  is  always  expected  to  be  "  popular." 
Let  us  suppose,  also,  that  each  of  our  publishers  should 
decide  to  issue  five  novels  in  the  course  of  the  next 
twelve  months,  in  the  hope  that  one  of  the  five  might 
achieve  a  sale  of  one  hundred  thousand  copies;  and  let 
us  imagine,  further,  that  if  any  of  the  novels  so  issued 
should  seem,  within  the  first  month  of  its  career,  to  be 
unlikely  to  attain  an  ultimate  sale  of  one  hundred 
thousand  copies,  the  publishers  should  determine  to 
remove  it  summarily  from  circulation,  destroy  the 
plates,  and  burn  the  manuscript.  Every  author  would 
protest  at  once  that  all  the  publishers  had  gone  insane ; 
and  the  reading  public  would  clamor  loudly  against  the 
discontinuance  of  all  books  of  poetry,  biography,  his- 
tory, criticism,  scholarship,  and  science.  Yet  this 
hypothetical  and  almost  unimaginable  situation  in  the 
world  of  books  is  precisely  the  situation  that  confronts 
our  dramatic  authors  at  the  present  time  in  the  world 
of  plays.  They  must  write  a  "  best  seller  "  or  nothing : 
they  must  write  a  play  that  seems  likely  to  run  a  year, 
or  they  must  not  write  a  play  at  all. 

When  every  manuscript  is  judged  by  its  likelihood 
to  achieve  a  season's  run,  it  follows  that  many  great 
manuscripts  must  be  rejected.  Of  such  a  piece  as  The 
Weavers  of  Gerhart  Hauptmann,  our  gambling  Amer- 


THE  LONG  RUN  IN  THE  THEATRE     253 

ican  managers  have  been  saying  for  twenty  years,  "  It's 
a  great  play,  of  course ;  but  there  isn't  a  cent  of  money 
in  it."  What  they  mean,  really,  is  that  there  isn't  a 
hundred  thousand  dollars  in  it ;  but  the  distinction  re- 
mains unapparent  to  the  gambling  mind.  The  Weavers 
has  lately  been  produced  at  an  abandoned  theatre  in 
New  York;  it  has  run  for  more  than  two  months,  and 
it  has  paid  its  way:  but  this  sort  of  success  has  come 
to  seem  a  sort  of  failure  to  the  mind  that  is  fixed  for- 
ever on  a  season's  run.  Why  bet  at  all — the  gamblers 
seem  to  say — unless  you  have  a  chance  of  winning 
thirty-five  for  one?  But  anybody  who  has  ever  sys- 
tematically played  roulette  will  be  likely  to  protest  that 
"  that  way  madness  lies." 

There  are  many  great  plays  which  might  be  produced 
for  one  month  at  a  total  cost  of  twenty  thousand  dol- 
lars— including  all  the  necessary  expenses  both  of  the 
proprietor  of  the  theatre  and  of  the  proprietor  of  the 
production — and  which,  during  that  period,  would  be 
certain  to  attract  to  the  box-office  at  least  twenty-two 
thousand  dollars.  A  surplus  of  two  thousand  dollars 
in  a  single  month  is  considered  a  very  good  profit  in 
any  other  business ;  but,  in  the  gamble  of  the  theatre, 
our  managers  persist  in  losing  many  times  that  sum 
in  the  hope  of  ultimately  winning  one  hundred  thousand 
dollars  at  a  single  cast. 

What  we  really  need  is  a  system  which  will  permit  our 
managers  to  present  a  play  for  six  weeks  only,  with  the 
expectation  of  reaping  a  reasonable  profit  of  not  less 
than  ten  per  cent,  on  each  production,  but  with  no  in- 
tention of  running  any  single  play  throughout  an  entire 


254     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

season.  This  sound  and  businesslike  and  sensible  sys- 
tem has  been  adopted  by  the  Washington  Square 
Players ;  and  it  is  reassuring  to  record  that  the  produc- 
tions which  have  been  offered  to  the  public  by  this 
organization  have  been  registered  among  the  most  in- 
teresting enterprises  of  recent  years. 


XXVII 
THE  NON-COMMERCIAL  DRAMA 

THERE  is  no  reason  why  the  critic  should  feel  a 
greater  patience  for  the  uncommercial  drama  than  is 
commonly  evinced  by  the  theatre-going  public ;  but  the 
non-commercial  drama  is  another  thing  entirely.  Any 
protest  against  commercialism  in  the  theatre  should  be 
based  upon  a  clear  distinction  between  these  very  dif- 
ferent alternatives.  Many  good  plays  may  be  classed 
as  non-commercial ;  but  no  play  that  is  utterly  uncom- 
mercial can  logically  be  considered  good. 

There  is  a  sense  in  which  all  art  is  of  necessity  com- 
mercial. Art  makes  things  which  need  to  be  distributed ; 
business  distributes  things  which  have  been  made:  and 
each  of  the  arts  is,  therefore,  necessarily  accompanied 
by  a  business,  whose  special  purpose  is  to  distribute  the 
products  of  that  art.  The  sentimental  tradition  that  a 
sincere  artist  should  be  a  bad  business  man  is  lacking 
in  essential  sanity.  History  has  recorded  a  few  in- 
stances of  great  painters  and  great  poets  who  have 
starved  to  death  or  wearied  out  their  lives  in  penury 
because  they  failed  to  realize  the  commercial  value  of 
their  products;  but  if  the  public  must  sentimentalize 
over  these  tragical  exceptions,  it  should  weep  more 
because  the  artists  were  lacking  in  common  sense  than 

255 


because  the  world  was  lacking  in  appreciation.  A  man 
who  can  make  great  things  that  his  contemporaries 
will  not  buy  should  be  able  also  to  make  great  things 
that  his  contemporaries  will  buy :  and  a  failure  to  cope 
with  this  alternative  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  a  sign 
of  genius. 

In  a  special  sense,  the  drama  is  of  necessity  the  most 
commercial  of  the  arts.  A  play  must  be  produced  in 
a  theatre ;  and  theatres  cost  money.  In  any  large  city 
— and  any  city  that  aspires  to  become  a  producing 
center  of  the  drama  must  be  large — a  theatre,  because 
it  must  be  situated  in  a  generally  accessible  district, 
must  occupy  ground  that  is  very  valuable;  and  the 
mere  continuance  of  its  existence  demands  a  large  ex- 
penditure for  rent.  A  play,  also,  must  be  presented 
by  a  company  of  actors;  and  this  necessity  demands 
a  large  expenditure  for  salaries.  Furthermore,  the 
production  of  a  play  requires  the  collaboration  of 
many  other  artists  in  addition  to  the  author  and  the 
actors ;  and  these  collaborators — the  stage-director,  the 
designer  of  the  scenery  and  costumes,  the  musicians, 
the  electricians,  and  many  minor  functionaries — must 
also  be  paid  for  their  services.  To  sum  the  matter  up,  it 
costs  much  more  to  launch  a  play  than  to  launch  a  poem 
or  a  picture.  This  cost  is  paid  by  the  theatre-going 
public ;  and  the  public  that  pays  the  cost  has  a  reason- 
able right  to  reject  any  project  that  it  deems  unworthy 
of  its  patronage. 

Any  theatrical  production  for  which  the  theatre- 
going  public  summarily  refuses  to  defray  the  cost  must 
be  classed  as  uncommercial;  and  to  insist  on  planning 


THE  NON-COMMERCIAL  DRAMA       257 

uncommercial  plays  must  be  regarded  as  a  failure  in 
dramatic  art.  In  an  art  whose  necessary  aim  is  to 
interest  the  public,  there  is  no  virtue  in  denying  the 
right  of  the  public  to  determine  whether  or  not  it  has 
been  interested.  If  a  man  has  entered  a  target  com- 
petition and  has  missed  the  mark,  the  question  whether 
his  failure  has  resulted  from  aiming  too  low  or  from 
aiming  too  high  is  merely  secondary:  the  point  is  that 
he  has  missed  the  target. 

But  there  are  many  plays  which,  properly  projected, 
can  pay  their  way,  without  reaping,  let  us  say,  a  larger 
interest  on  the  investment  than  would  have  been  af- 
forded if  the  capital  had  been  employed  in  any  other 
enterprise.  These  plays  should  be  classed,  not  as  un- 
commercial drama,  but  as  non-commercial  drama;  and 
the  difference  is  obvious. 

A  non-commercial  play  may  be  defined  as  a  play  that 
is  produced  more  for  the  love  of  the  production  than 
for  the  love  of  the  financial  profit  that  may  possibly 
result  from  the  investment.  All  business  may  be  divided 
into  good  business  and  bad  business.  Dismissing  bad 
business  as  uncommercial,  good  business  may  further  be 
subdivided  into  big  business  and  small  business.  Small 
business  may  be  defined  as  that  which  yields  less  than 
ten  per  cent,  on  the  investment ;  and  big  business  may 
be  defined  as  that  in  which  a  yield  of  less  than  ten 
per  cent,  is  regarded  as  a  failure. 

The  trouble  with  the  prevailing  theatre  system  in 
America  to-day  is  not  that  this  system  is  commercial; 
for,  in  any  democratic  country,  it  is  not  unreasonable 
to  expect  the  public  to  defray  the  cost  of  the  sort  of 


258     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

drama  that  it  wishes,  and  that,  therefore,  it  deserves. 
The  trouble  is,  rather,  that  our  theatre  system  is  de- 
voted almost  entirely  to  big  business ;  and  that,  in  ignor- 
ing the  small  profits  of  small  business,  it  tends  to 
exclude  not  only  the  uncommercial  drama,  but  the  non- 
commercial drama  as  well. 

Whether  or  not  the  government  of  the  United  States 
can  succeed  in  proving  legally  the  existence  of  a  theatre 
trust,  everybody  knows  that  the  theatre  system  of  this 
country  is  controlled  by  less  than  twenty  men.  These 
men  have  organized  our  theatre-business  as  a  big  busi- 
ness; and  in  none  of  their  productions  can  they  rest 
contented  with  a  profit  of  less  than  ten  per  cent.  Any 
play  that  does  not  realize  this  profit  is  summarily  dis- 
carded as  a  failure ;  and  four  failures  out  of  every  five 
productions  must  be  paid  for  by  the  overwhelming 
profits  of  the  single  fifth  production.  Thus,  plays  that 
might  earn  a  profit  of  two  hundred  dollars  per  week  are 
kilkJ  off  to  make  room  for  other  plays — which  are 
frequently  less  worthy — that  may  earn  a  profit  of  two 
thousand  dollars  per  week.  In  the  frantic  gamble  of  big 
business,  large  losses  must  be  offset  by  larger  gains. 

It  is  this  system  of  big  business — which  demands  that 
any  play,  to  earn  the  privilege  of  a  continuance  of  its 
existence,  shall  reap  a  profit  of  several  hundred  per 
cent,  of  the  original  investment — that  weighs  so  cruelly 
upon  the  author  in  America  to-day.  It  is  reasonable 
to  demand  of  the  dramatist  that  he  shall  sufficiently 
appeal  to  the  theatre-going  public  to  draw  a  yield  of 
ten  per  cent,  on  the  investment  required  to  produce  his 
play;  but  it  is  not  reasonable  to  demand  that  a  yield 


THE  NON-COMMERCIAL  DRAMA       259 

in  excess  of  this  percentage  shall  be  regarded  as  a  con- 
dition precedent  to  the  continuance  of  his  production. 
Any  project  that  demands  a  profit  of  more  than  ten 
per  cent,  is  not  business,  but  gambling ;  and  a  gambling 
proposition  is  just  as  uncommercial  as  a  non-commer- 
cial proposition. 

To  give  the  dramatist  a  proper  chance  to  earn  his 
living  in  America,  we  must  break  the  power  of  the 
theatre  trust.  A  review  of  recent  judicial  decisions  in 
this  country  affords  small  hope  that  this  effect  can 
be  attained  by  any  governmental  process.  The  only 
thing  to  do  is  to  prove,  by  actual  experiment,  that  small 
business  can  still  be  done  in  our  theatres,  quite  irre- 
spective of  the  dictates  of  the  less  than  twenty  men  who 
have  decreed  that,  in  all  our  theatre-business,  there 
shall  be  no  alternative  between  big  business  and  no  busi- 
ness at  all. 

While  discarding  the  uncommercial  drama — that  is 
to  say,  the  sort  of  drama  that  cannot  pay  its  way — 
as  not  worth  fighting  for,  we  must  fight  for  the  exist- 
ence of  the  non-commercial  drama — that  is  to  say,  the 
sort  of  drama  that  can  earn  a  profit  of  from  five  to  ten 
per  cent.,  but  is  incapable  of  earning  more. 


XXVIII 
THE  PUBLIC  AND  THE  THEATRE 


A  STUDY  of  the  public  is  an  indispensable  detail  of 
the  study  of  the  drama;  for  the  public,  in  conjunction 
with  the  actors  and  the  author,  constitutes  a  corner 
of  that  eternal  triangle  upon  which,  as  a  fundamental 
basis,  the  edifice  of  the  drama  must  be  reared.  If  some 
Maecenas,  endowed  with  an  exacting  taste  and  an  all- 
commanding  pocketbook,  should  desire  to  enjoy  a  bet- 
ter drama  than  is  ordinarily  offered  in  the  theatre  of 
to-day,  he  might  spend  his  time  and  money  in  the 
search  for  finer  actors  or  for  nobler  authors,  but  he 
could  accomplish  his  intention  much  more  easily  and 
quickly  by  collecting  and  delivering  to  the  theatre  a 
finer  and  a  nobler  audience.  It  has  frequently  been 
stated  that  the  public  always  gets  as  good  a  drama  as 
it  deserves,  since  the  managers,  in  order  to  make  money, 
must  give  the  public  what  the  public  wants ;  and  this 
somewhat  cynical  theory  is  true  to  this  extent, — that 
the  public  never  gets  a  better  drama  than  it  concertedly 
requests.  To  improve  the  quality  of  the  supply,  it  is 
necessary,  first  of  all,  to  improve  the  quality  of  the 
demand.  Though  the  drama  is  an  art,  the  theatre  is 

260 


THE  PUBLIC  AND  THE  THEATRE     261 

a  business ;  and  it  does  not  pay  to  cast  pearls  before 
people  who  are  lacking  in  intelligence  and  taste. 

One  of  the  main  troubles  with  the  theatre  in  America 
to-day  is  that  it  suffers  tragically  from  a  lack  of  con- 
stant patronage  by  people  of  intelligence  and  taste. 
Our  supply  of  plays  is  not  determined  by  the  demand 
of  our  most  cultured  public,  but  only  by  the  demand 
of  a  public  that  is  by  no  means  representative  of  the 
best  that  is  thought  and  felt  in  this  country  at  the 
present  time.  Any  study  of  this  problem  must  begin 
and  end  in  the  city  of  New  York;  for  it  is  an  unfortu- 
nate fact  that  our  theatre  is  so  constituted  that  the 
rest  of  the  country  is  allowed  to  see  only  those  plays 
which  have  previously  made  money  in  the  metropolis. 
The  exceptions  to  this  statement  are  of  the  kind  that 
only  prove  the  rule.  Attempts  have  been  made,  in  re- 
cent years,  to  institute  "  producing  centers  "  in  certain 
other  cities — Chicago,  Los  Angeles,  and  Boston,  for 
example — but  even  plays  produced  originally  in  these 
cities  have  seldom  been  sent  on  tours  through  the  coun- 
try until  they  have  been  labeled  as  "  successes  "  by 
the  people  who  frequent  the  theatres  in  New  York.  As 
conditions  stand  at  present,  a  metropolitan  verdict 
is  the  only  one  that  counts;  and  an  author  or  an  actoi, 
in  order  to  reach  the  rest  of  the  country,  must  first 
secure  the  privilege  of  being  booked  throughout  the 
circuits  of  the  smaller  cities  by  passing  a  favorable 
examination  in  New  York.  Thus — except  for  the  ad- 
mirable work  that  is  being  accomplished  here  and  there 
in  little  independent  theatres — the  destiny  of  the  drama 
in  this  country  is  still  decided  by  the  people  who  habitu- 


262     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

ally  pay  to  be  amused  in  the  tiny  circle  that  is  centered 
in  Times  Square.  The  question,  then,  becomes  of  prime 
importance  whether  these  people  are  adequately  repre- 
sentative of  America,  either  as  it  is  or  as  it  yearns 
to  be:  and  to  this  important  question  the  answer  is, 
emphatically,  "  No." 

Any  one  who  makes  a  practice  of  attending  every 
play  that  is  exhibited  in  the  metropolis  needs  only  to 
look  about  him  in  the  orchestra  to  see  at  a  glance  that 
the  success  or  failure  of  an  offering  is  not  determined 
by  an  audience  that  is  representative  of  America  or 
even  of  New  York.  The  audience  is  recruited  mainly 
from  that  artificial  region  that  is  known,  in  the  lan- 
guage of  the  theatre,  as  Broadway, — a  region  in  which 
real  people  do  not  live,  and  cannot  live,  because  it  is 
lighted  only  by  electric  lamps  instead  of  by  the  sun  and 
moon  and  stars. 

The  prospect  would  be  hopeless  if  the  public  of 
Broadway  were  the  only  public  in  New  York  that  the 
theatre  might  appeal  to ;  but  this  is  not  the  case.  There 
are  very  many  people  of  intelligence  and  taste — people 
of  the  sort  who  welcome  eagerly  the  best  that  is  thought 
and  said  through  the  medium  of  any  of  the  arts — 
who  have  ceased  to  attend  the  theatre  in  New  York 
because  the  theatre,  for  the  most  part,  has  ceased  to 
give  them  the  sort  of  stimulus  that  they  desire.  It  is 
easy  enough  for  any  student  of  this  problem  to  meet 
these  people  face  to  face,  for  their  patronage  of  art 
is  an  active  and  a  public  exercise.  Whenever  the  Ninth 
Symphony  of  Beethoven  is  played  by  a  great  orchestra 
in  Carnegie  Hall,  the  enormous  auditorium  is  crowded 


THE  PUBLIC  AND  THE  THEATRE     263 

to  the  roof  by  people  who  would  also  patronize  the 
theatre  if  the  theatre  would  afford  them  a  commeasur- 
able  exaltation.  A  cultured  and  appreciative  public 
pays  six  dollars  a  seat  at  the  Metropolitan  Opera 
House  to  hear  the  finest  singing  in  the  world;  and 
whenever  Nijinsky  dances,  the  same  public  assembles 
in  thousands  to  enjoy  the  spectacle.  Yet  music  and 
dancing  are  arts  less  democratic  than  the  drama — less 
popular  in  their  appeal — and  a  more  specific  culture 
is  required  for  the  due  appreciation  of  them.  An 
afternoon  stroll  through  the  galleries  of  the  various 
art-dealers  on  Fifth  Avenue  will  also  bring  the  student 
face  to  face  with  still  another  public  composed  of  peo- 
ple who  are  quick  to  welcome  the  best  that  can  be 
thought  and  said  in  terms  of  art.  These  people,  who 
love  painting  and  sculpture,  would  also  love  the  theatre 
if  the  theatre  should  set  out  to  woo  them  in  the  mood 
of  beauty  and  of  truth ;  and  the  teeming  thousands 
who  annually  study  the  exhibits  in  the  Metropolitan 
Museum  of  Art  might  crowd  the  galleries  of  any  theatre 
that  should  successfully  appeal  to  them. 

The  tragic  fact  of  the  matter  seems  to  be  that  these 
thousands  and  thousands  of  people,  who  patronize 
music  and  painting  and  sculpture  and  dancing  and  all 
the  other  arts,  have  ceased  to  patronize  the  theatre. 
People  of  the  same  class,  twenty  years  ago,  attended 
every  production  at  Daly's  or  the  old  Lyceum  and  exer- 
cised an  active  influence  on  the  traffic  of  the  stage;  but 
nowadays,  for  the  most  part,  they  stay  at  home  and 
permit  the  destiny  of  the  drama  to  be  determined  by 
a  mob  of  other  people  who  are  inferior  in  intelligence 


264     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

and  taste.  They  behave  like  educated  voters  on  Elec- 
tion Day  who  remain  away  from  the  polls  and  allow 
some  vulgar  politician  to  sneak  into  a  great  office  by 
default. 

The  way  in  which  this  cultured  public  was  alienated 
from  the  theatre  may  now  be  studied,  in  retrospect,  as 
a  dismal  fact  of  history.  Daly's  audience  was  not  dis- 
persed by  Daly's  death,  and  the  retirement  of  Daniel 
Frohman  from  active  management  was  not  a  cause  but 
a  result  of  the  disaster.  The  catastrophe  occurred 
about  a  dozen  years  ago,  at  the  time  of  the  great  strug- 
gle between  trust  and  counter-trust  for  supreme  con- 
trol of  all  the  theatres  in  America.  During  the  course 
of  this  long  struggle — which  resulted  ultimately  in  a 
no  less  devastating  deadlock — the  theatre  became  en- 
tirely commercialized,  and  the  cathedrals  of  the  drama 
were  pulverized  by  the  artillery  of  business.  At  that 
period,  the  cultured  public  of  New  York — the  public 
which,  in  the  preceding  decade,  had  supported  Daly's 
Theatre  and  the  old  Lyceum — renounced  regretfully 
the  theatre-going  habit ;  and  the  theatre  of  to-day 
still  suffers  from  the  fact  that  it  is  very  diffi- 
cult to  reestablish  a  faith  which  has  been  wantonly 
destroyed. 

The  sins  of  the  fathers  are  visited  upon  the  children ; 
and  the  managers  of  to-day  are  forced  to  suffer  for  the 
crimes  committed  in  the  theatre  by  the  managers  of  a 
dozen  years  ago.  The  status  of  the  drama  has  been 
steadily  improved  in  recent  years.  A  new  generation  of 
managers,  led  by  such  men  as  Mr.  Winthrop  Ames,  Mr. 
John  D.  Williams,  and  Mr.  Arthur  Hopkins — to  men- 


THE  PUBLIC  AND  THE  THEATRE     265 

tion  only  a  few  of  those  who  are  now  appealing  for 
consideration  of  the  drama  as  an  art — has  greatly  im- 
proved the  product  of  our  theatre ;  but  this  new  array 
of  managers  has  not  yet  succeeded  in  winning  back  the 
concerted  support  of  that  cultured  public  which  re- 
nounced the  theatre-going  habit  in  the  dark  days  of  a 
dozen  years  ago. 

The  immediate  problem  at  the  present  time  is  to  find 
an  effective  method  of  convincing  the  cultured  public 
that  ten  or  a  dozen  of  the  round  number  of  two  hun- 
dred plays  that  are  now  produced  every  season  in  New 
York  are  genuinely  worthy  of  the  patronage  of  people 
of  intelligence  and  taste.  The  best  public  must  be 
won  back  to  the  support  of  the  best  drama;  and  this 
public  must  be  organized  and  delivered  so  effectively 
that  once  again — as  in  the  days  of  Daly's  Theatre — it 
will  become  impossible  for  a  really  fine  production  to 
fail  for  lack  of  patronage. 

One  of  the  main  difficulties  of  the  situation  is  the 
decadence  of  dramatic  criticism  in  New  York.  Dra- 
matic criticism  may  be  defined — in  the  terminology  of 
Matthew  Arnold — as  "  a  disinterested  endeavor  to 
learn  and  propagate  the  best  that  is  known  and  thought 
in  the  theatre  of  the  world."  This  endeavor  was  at 
least  attempted  twenty  years  ago;  but,  during  the 
last  decade,  the  majority  of  our  most  influential  news- 
papers have  ceased  to  treat  the  drama  as  an  art  and 
have  chosen,  rather,  to  regard  the  theatre  merely  as 
a  function  of  Broadway. 

Thus  the  editing  of  our  theatre  for  an  inferior  public 
is  fostered  by  the  fact  that  the  dramatic  columns  in 


266     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

our  newspapers  are  edited  for  the  same  public  and  con- 
fine themselves,  for  the  most  part,  to  an  utterly  un- 
critical endeavor  to  estimate  in  advance  the  success  or 
failure  of  an  undertaking  in  the  theatre.  They  print 
a  guess  that  a  certain  play  will  run  a  year,  or  else 
they  print  a  guess  that  the  production  will  be  carted 
to  the  storehouse  in  a  week.  In  other  words,  they 
judge  the  offerings  of  art  according  to  a  standard  which 
is  determined  merely  by  the  taste  of  an  uncultivated 
audience. 

The  point  is  not  that  our  individual  dramatic  critics 
are  lacking  in  discernment.  Nearly  half  a  dozen  of  the 
writers  who  are  employed  at  the  present  time  to  report 
the  doings  of  the  theatre  in  New  York  are  endowed 
sufficiently,  in  education  and  in  taste,  to  distinguish  a 
work  of  art  from  a  product  of  commercial  manufac- 
ture ;  but  the  general  attitude  of  our  public  press — 
considered  as  a  whole — obscures  their  individual  efforts 
"  to  learn  and  propagate  the  best  that  is  known  and 
thought  in  the  theatre  of  the  world."  Even  these 
writers  are  required  to  devote  as  many  columns — or 
nearly  as  many — to  the  consideration  of  inconsiderable 
offerings  as  they  are  permitted  to  devote  to  the  ten  or 
twelve  productions  every  year  that  really  count.  They 
are  condemned,  nine-tenths  of  the  time,  to  write  news 
about  nothing;  and,  when  Pierrot  the  Prodigal  ap- 
pears, their  eloquent  praise  of  the  production  remains 
unheeded  by  ears  that  have  been  previously  deafened 
by  other  columns  of  praise  devoted  to  some  commercial 
fabric  that  seems  sure  to  run  a  season, — like  the  highly- 
heralded  Turn  to  the  Right!,  which,  though  popular 


THE  PUBLIC  AND  THE  THEATRE     267 

and  entertaining,  is  a  badly  constructed  play  and  can- 
not be  considered  seriously  as  a  work  of  art. 

That  our  newspapers,  for  the  most  part,  have  ceased 
to  treat  the  drama  as  an  art,  is  a  fact  that  can  be  easily 
established  by  a  study  of  their  pages.  Whenever  a  new 
opera  is  produced  at  the  Metropolitan  Opera  House,  it 
is  analyzed  in  detail  by  an  expert  who  interprets  its 
defects  and  qualities  to  an  audience  of  cultured  readers ; 
exhibitions  of  painting  or  of  sculpture  are  studied  care- 
fully by  scholars  who  talk  about  art  in  terms  that 
receive  respect  from  an  initiated  public ;  but.  new  plays, 
in  the  same  newspapers,  are  merely  written  up  amus- 
ingly as  items  in  the  general  doings  of  the  day.  The 
policy  of  our  newspapers  toward  music  and  painting 
and  sculpture  is  scholarly  and  critical;  but,  with  one 
or  two  exceptions,  their  policy  toward  the  drama  is 
merely  reportorial.  They  treat  the  theatre  mainly 
from  the  standpoint  of  its  value  as  a  fountainhead  of 
news. 

Now,  art  is  art,  and  news  is  news,  and  never  the  twain 
shall  meet.  It  is  one  thing  to  inform  the  cultured 
public  of  the  fact  that  a  visit  to  Pierrot  the  Prodigal 
affords  an  adventure  to  the  spirit  that  may  be  classed 
with  the  unforgettable  experience  of  traveling  all  the 
way  to  Nimes  to  come  suddenly  around  a  corner  and 
see  the  tiny  Roman  temple  sitting  lonely  and  eternal 
in  the  midst  of  time;  and  it  is  another  thing  entirely 
to  inform  the  public  o£  Broadway  that  Turn  to  the 
Right!  is  a  "  knock-out."  The  same  newspaper  can- 
not successfully  sustain  an  attitude  toward  the  thea- 
tre which  shall  be  reportorial  and  an  attitude  toward 


268      PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

the  drama  which  shall  be  critical.  Art  is  not  news ; 
because  news  wears  a  date  upon  its  forehead  and  art 
does  not.  News,  at  the  most,  may  be  worthy  of  a  nine 
days'  wonder;  but  art,  at  its  best,  is  a  wonder  for  all 
time. 

By  editing  their  dramatic  columns  for  the  unculti- 
vated public  of  Broadway,  instead  of  for  that  finer 
public  that  desires  to  learn  and  to  enjoy  the  best  that  is 
known  and  thought  in  the  world  and  is  eager  to  patron- 
ize any  exercise  of  art  where  art  may  be  discerned,  our 
newspapers  make  it  very  difficult  for  people  of  refine- 
ment to  keep  actively  in  touch  with  the  best  that  is 
being  done  in  the  theatre  of  America.  These  people — 
and  their  name  is  legion — hang  back  from  the  support 
of  even  so  superlative  a  thing  as  Pierrot  the  Prodigal 
because  so  often  in  the  past  they  have  been  disillusion- 
ized by  patronizing  inferior  productions  that  had  been 
grossly  overpraised. 

This  leads  us  to  consider  the  great  harm  that  has 
been  done  by  the  persistent  over-advertising  of  inferior 
productions.  The  decadence  of  dramatic  criticism  is 
all  the  more  dangerous  at  a  time  when  the  theatre  is 
required  to  endure  the  insidious  assaults  of  a  system  of 
mendacious  puffery.  It  would  scarcely  be  an  exaggera- 
tion to  state  that  the  greatest  foe  of  the  contemporary 
drama  is  the  contemporary  press-agent.  This  func- 
tionary is  employed  to  beat  a  big  drum  in  front  of 
every  theatre  and  to  tell  the  public  that  every  play 
presented  is  a  masterpiece.  The  weakness  of  the  press- 
agent  arises  from  the  fact  that,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
he  can't  fool  all  the  people  all  the  time ;  but  the  tragedy 


THE  PUBLIC  AND  THE  THEATRE     269 

of  his  position  arises  from  the  fact  that,  by  fooling 
some  of  the  people  some  of  the  time,  he  prevents  nearly 
everybody  from  believing  him,  on  some  subsequent  occa- 
sion, when  he  happens  to  come  forward  with  the  truth. 

A  perusal,  at  any  time,  of  the  advertising  pages  in 
the  Sunday  newspapers  might  lead  to  the  impression 
that  each  of  the  forty  plays  then  current  in  New  York 
was  the  greatest  play  of  the  twentieth  century;  but 
this  impression  would  be  speedily  corrected  by  a  visit 
to  the  plays  themselves.  The  trouble  of  the  matter  is 
that  it  would  cost  a  cultured  theatre-goer  no  less  than 
one  hundred  and  sixty  dollars,  and  forty  evenings  of 
priceless  time,  to  find  out  for  himself  that  all  these 
advertisements  were  nothing  but  mere  lies ;  and,  after 
this  expensive  experience,  he  might  feel  indisposed  to 
risk  another  four  dollars  and  another  evening  to  see 
a  masterpiece  like  Pierrot  the  Prodigal.  The  efforts 
of  many  press-agents  to  lure  him  to  attend  inferior 
productions  are  more  than  likely,  in  the  long  run,  to 
result  in  keeping  him  away  from  a  production  which  he 
would  be  very  glad  to  patronize. 

The  method  by  which  the  press-agent  manages  to 
advertise  a  bad  play  as  if  it  were  a  good  play  is  just 
as  simple  as  it  is  dishonest.  Suppose  that  so  cultured 
and  reliable  a  critic  as  Mr.  Walter  Prichard  Eaton, 
in  reviewing  a  hypothetical  farce  entitled  The  Straw 
Hat,  has  written  something  like  the  following: — "The 
theme  of  The  Straw  Hat  is  traditional;  the  plot  ie 
mechanical;  the  dialogue  is  dull.  One  or  two  moments 
in  the  second  act,  however,  are  made  mildly  amusing 
by  the  acrobatic  antics  of  a  knockabout  comedian." 


270     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

The  press-agent  will  seize  upon  this  notice  and  print 
the  following  extraction  from  it  in  the  next  edition 
of  the  Sunday  newspapers : — "  '  Amusing.' — Walter 
Prichard  Eaton."  By  this  procedure,  people  of  intel- 
ligence and  taste  who  subsequently  see  the  play  are  led 
to  believe  that  Mr.  Eaton  is  an  idiot;  and  when  this 
distinguished  commentator,  at  a  later  date,  implores 
the  public  to  patronize  so  beautiful  a  thing  as  Pierrot 
the  Prodigal,  a  certain  number  of  his  readers  will  re- 
member The  Straw  Hat  and  hug  their  money  in  their 
pockets. 

A  study  of  the  psychology  of  theatrical  advertising 
must  lead  to  the  opinion  that  the  lies  of  the  press-agent 
are  the  sort  of  blunders  that  are  worse  than  crimes. 
Every  lie  that  is  printed  to  puff  a  bad  play  cuts  down 
the  attendance  at  the  next  really  good  play  that  is 
presented. 

This  is,  perhaps,  the  biggest  lesson  that  our  man- 
agers have  still  to  learn: — that,  in  the  long  run,  it 
pays  to  tell  the  public  that  Mr.  John  Galsworthy  is 
a  greater  man  than  Mr.  James  Montgomery,  and  that 
The  Thunderbolt — which  did  not  make  any  money  in 
America — is  a  greater  play  than  Cheating  Cheaters — 
which  was  very  popular.  The  persistent  practice  of 
press-agentry  alienates  more  people  from  the  theatre 
than  it  attracts ;  and  the  overadvertising  of  inferior 
productions  makes  it  very  difficult  to  secure  the  patron- 
age of  works  that  are  superior  by  people  of  intelligence 
and  taste. 


THE  PUBLIC  AND  THE  THEATRE     271 


There  seems  to  be  a  general  assumption  —  on  the  part 
of  editors  and  managers  and  publishers  —  that  the  read- 
ing and  theatre-going  public  is  made  up,  for  the  most 
part,  of  fools. 

Several  years  ago,  the  present  writer  was  invited  to 
prepare  a  series  of  instructive  articles  for  a  magazine 
whose  circulation  amounted  to  a  million  copies  every 
month.  "  Remember,  first  of  all,"  remarked  the  editor, 
"  that  our  magazine  is  planned  to  appeal  to  the  women- 
folk of  Muncie,  Indiana.  Don't  use  any  words  that  the 
women-folk  of  Muncie  would  not  be  likely  to  under- 
stand; don't  refer  to  any  authors  that  they  haven't 
heard  of.  Write  down  to  them.  Don't  talk  above  their 
heads."  The  answer  was,  of  course,  inevitable. 
"  Have  they  read  Sir  Thomas  Browne?  Have  they 
seen  the  lovely  little  jewel-box  of  Nimes?  Do  they  know 
the  difference  between  Savonarola  and  a  brand  of 
soap?  "  "  I'm  afraid  not,"  said  the  editor,  and  sighed. 
At  this  point,  I  retreated  from  the  office,  with  a  dig- 
nified adieu  —  for  that  was  many  years  ago,  and  I 
accepted  the  editor's  opinion  of  the  public  of  Muncie, 
Indiana.  But  I  know  better  now. 

The  fact  is  that  many  editors  and  publishers  and 
managers  assume  a  state  of  imbecility  in  the  general 
and  public  mind.  Their  advice  to  authors,  nearly 
always,  is  couched  in  some  such  phrase  as  this,  —  "  Be 
careful,  do  be  careful,  not  to  talk  above  their  heads  !  " 
That  other  danger  of  talking  underneath  the  heads 
of  the  public  is  a  matter  that  they  seldom  seem  to 


272     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

think  of!  It  never  occurs  to  them,  apparently,  that 
the  public  may  know  more  than  they  know  themselves, 
and  that  the  public  may  care  more  about  the  calling 
of  high  matters  than  they  themselves  have  ever  learned 
to  care. 

No  author  who  really  is  an  author  can  ever  be  suc- 
cessfully advised  to  "  write  down  "  to  the  public.  The 
only  reasonable  thing  to  do — as  every  author  knows — 
is  to  "  write  up  "  to  the  public ;  for  every  artist  who 
has  mystically  listened  to  the  elusive  but  imperious  in- 
sistence of  the  harmony  of  words  knows  that  nothing 
can  be  gained  by  a  deliberate  destruction  of  the  pre- 
determined pattern,  and  that  everything  is  to  be"  gained 
by  a  frank  and  free  appeal  to  all  the  ears  of  all  the 
world  that  are  capable  of  hearing.  As  Lincoln  said, 
in  an  apostolic  moment,  "  You  can't  fool  all  the  people 
all  the  time."  Why  not,  therefore,  take  a  chance  and 
trust  them? 

Many,  many  years  ago  [for  this  was  long  before  the 
period  of  moving-pictures]  the  present  writer  at- 
tempted to  compose,  in  collaboration  with  a  man  who 
has  since  become  a  noted  poet,  a  melodrama  of  the 
type  designed  to  appeal  to  the  public  of  Third  Avenue. 
It  was  called  The  Mad  Dog — if  memory  is  not  at  fault 
— and  the  villain  was  a  wicked  doctor  whose  special 
business  in  life  was  to  assault  the  lives  of  heroes  and 
of  heroines  by  inoculating  them  with  germs  of  hydro- 
phobia. But,  after  the  first  act  had  been  sedulously 
planned,  the  poet  said,  one  evening, — "  The  trouble 
with  this  job  is  that  we  haven't  learned  how  not  to 
laugh  about  it.  Owen  Davis  doesn't  laugh:  Theodore 


THE  PUBLIC  AND  THE  THEATRE     273 

Krcmer  never  laughed  in  his  life.  For  Gawd's  sake,  let's 
be  serious !  "  And  then  we  tried — very,  very  hard — 
to  be  serious ;  but,  after  many  weeks,  we  discovered  that 
this  consummation  devoutly  to  be  wished  could  not  be 
achieved  by  merely  taking  thought.  We  did  not  know 
how  not  to  laugh:  we  could  not  capture  the  mystic 
secret  of  "  writing  down "  to  the  public  of  Third 
Avenue.  We  discovered,  incidentally,  that  such  mas- 
terpieces as  Bertha,  the  Sewing-Machine  Girl  or  China- 
town Charlie,  the  King  of  the  Opium  Ring  can  be 
written  only  by  authors  who  are  as  certain  of  their 
mission  and  their  message  as  Mr.  Percy  MacKaye;  and 
we  learned  also  that  the  only  way  to  do  a  job  suc- 
cessfully is  to  care  about  it,  and  to  care  about  it  abso- 
lutely. The  Mad  Dog — needless  to  say — was  never 
written;  but  it  served  its  momentary  purpose  in  the 
scheme  of  things  by  teaching  two  young  authors  that 
the  general  and  public  mind  is  not  a  thing  to  be 
despised. 

Why  should  it  be  despised,  when  so  often — so  very, 
very  often — it  has  shown  a  disposition  to  stand  up  and 
to  salute  the  momentary  passing  of  anything  at  all  that 
may  be  looked  upon  as  offering  an  intimation  of  im- 
mortality? The  heads  of  the  public  loom  far  higher 
than  our  managers  or  editors  or  publishers  imagine. 
The  problem  is  not  how  to  talk  down  to  them,  but  how 
to  talk  up  to  them !  The  only  proper  aspect  for  the 
author  is  the  attitude  of  any  of  those  favored  saints  of 
Perugino's  painting,  who  look  upward  at  they  know  not 
what,  and  smile,  and  wonder,  and  believe,  and — in  con- 
sequence— convince. 


274     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

For  nearly  twenty  years  our  theatre  has  been  ham- 
pered by  the  fact  that  it  has  been  commercially  con- 
trolled by  a  little  coterie  of  managers  who — lacking 
education,  lacking  culture,  lacking  taste — have  neg- 
lected to  perceive  the  simple  fact  that,  in  these  respects, 
the  heads  of  the  public  have  towered  higher  than  their 
own.  They  have  approached  the  public  not  humbly  and 
with  due  respect,  but  arrogantly  and  with  the  sort  of 
scorn  which  accompanies  incompetence.  They  have 
based  their  business  on  a  bland  assumption  that  the 
people  who  support  the  theatre  have  no  brains. 

But,  recently,  there  have  been  many  unquestionable 
indications  that  the  dominance  of  the  American  theatre 
is  passing  rapidly  from  those  managers  whose  habit  has 
been  always  to  look  down  upon  the  heads  of  the  public 
to  a  younger  and  a  newer  group  who  have  adopted  the 
more  salutory  habit  of  looking  up  to  heads  which  they 
mystically  hope  to  find  somewhere  in  those  higher 
regions  which  have  remained,  for  such  a  long  time, 
unexplored.  In  all  their  undertakings,  these  new  man- 
agers have  been  actuated  by  a  motive  which  may  be 
defined — in  philosophic  terms — as  "  a  daring  to  be- 
lieve " ;  and  this  daring  has  been  appreciated  and 
rewarded  by  a  public  which  enjoys  the  quite  uncus- 
tomary feeling  of  being  approached  with  that  degree  of 
courtesy  which  arises  from  respect. 


XXIX 

A  DEMOCRATIC  INSURRECTION  IN  THE 
THEATRE 


A  PERSON  living  in  England  in  the  period  of  Shake- 
speare, or  in  France  in  the  period  of  Moliere,  would 
have  considered  himself  cheated  by  the  people  who  con- 
trolled the  theatre  if  he  had  never  been  permitted  to  see 
a  play  of  Shakespeare's  or  of  Moliere's ;  yet  such  an 
inhibition  is  imposed  upon  the  public  by  the  people  who 
control  the  American  theatre  at  the  present  time.  We 
are  living  in  the  midst  of  a  great  period  of  dramatic 
productivity — one  of  the  very  greatest  since  the  drama 
first  emerged  in  Europe  two  thousand  and  four  hun- 
dred years  ago.  During  the  last  twenty-five  years 
great  plays  have  been  delivered  to  the  world  by 
dramatists  as  different  in  message  and  in  method  as 
Ibsen,  Strindberg,  Hauptmann,  Sudermann,  Schnitz- 
ler,  Donnay,  Hervieu,  Brieux,  Rostand,  Maeterlinck, 
Heijermans,  Echegaray,  D'Annunzio,  Tchekoff,  Pinero, 
Jones,  Shaw,  Synge,  Galsworthy,  and  Barrie.  These 
twenty  men  have  written  at  least  a  hundred  plays  which 
will  hold  a  permanent  and  honored  place  in  any  ultimate 
history  of  dramatic  literature;  and  during  the  same 
period  scores  and  scores  of  exceptionally  worthy  pieces 

275 


276     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

have  been  written  by  other  dramatists,  including  at 
least  a  dozen  native-born  Americans.  In  sheer  produc- 
tivity of  dramatic  authorship  of  prime  importance,  the 
present  age  undoubtedly  exceeds  the  period  of  Moliere 
and  probably  exceeds  the  period  of  Shakespeare.  Yet 
very  rarely  is  the  public  of  New  York,  and  almost  never 
is  the  public  of  any  of  our  smaller  cities,  permitted 
to  see  a  performance  of  any  of  the  great  plays  of  the 
present  age.  Generally  speaking,  the  theatre-going 
public  of  America  might  just  as  well  be  living  in  a 
period  when  no  great  plays  were  being  written.  The 
fact  is  that,  in  this  country,  the  current  theatre  lamen- 
tably fails  to  fulfil  its  proper  function  of  purveying  the 
current  drama. 

The  reason  for  this  failure  is  that,  though  the  drama 
ought  to  be  a  democratic  art,  the  constitution  of  our 
theatre  at  the  present  time  is  not  popular,  but  oligar- 
chic. Nine-tenths  of  all  the  theatres  in  America  are 
controlled  by  fewer  than  half  a  hundred  men,  and  only 
a  minority  of  these  men  are  really  interested  in  employ- 
ing the  theatre  to  purvey  the  current  drama.  The 
majority  merely  find  themselves  by  accident  in  the 
theatre-business,  and  their  chief  object  is  to  make  as 
much  money  as  they  can.  In  consequence,  they  seldom 
produce  a  play  which  does  not  seem  likely  to  run  con- 
tinuously in  New  York  for  at  least  half  a  season,  and 
they  rarely  send  to  any  of  our  lesser  cities  a  play  which 
has  not  already  reaped  the  profits  of  a  long  run  in  the 
metropolis. 

Of  course,  in  a  city  like  New  York,  a  larger  public 
can  be  found  for  a  silly  or  a  vulgar  show  than  for  a 


A  DEMOCRATIC  INSURRECTION        277 

play  that  requires  from  its  audience  an  appreciable 
amount  of  intelligence  and  taste.  The  naked  legs  of 
sportive  chorus-girls  will  always  appeal  to  more  people 
than  the  naked  souls  of  Ibsen's  heroines.  But,  in 
theory,  at  least,  the  theatre  ought  to  be  a  public- 
service  corporation ;  and  shall  no  service  be  performed 
for  the  mighty  minority  who  care  more  about  the 
human  mind  than  the  human  members? 

To  this  question  the  managers  reply  that  they  give 
the  public  what  the  public  wants,  and  point  to  the  testi- 
mony of  the  box-office  to  back  up  the  assertion.  This 
argument  would  be  incontrovertible  if  the  only  public  in 
America  were  the  public  that  every  evening  flickers 
moth-like  around  the  white  lights  of  Broadway,  seeking 
momentary  entertainment  with  no  forethought  and  no 
afterthought.  But  New  York  is  not  America — and 
Broadway  is  not  New  York.  There  are  thousands  and 
thousands  of  people  who  are  eager  to  learn  the  best  that 
is  known  and  thought  in  the  drama  of  the  present  period. 
In  any  particular  community  these  people  may  stand  in 
the  minority;  but,  considered  as  a  whole,  they  consti- 
tute a  larger  legion  than  is  dreamt  of  in  the  philosophy 
of  our  oligarchic  managers.  A  single  enterprising 
organization,  the  Drama  League  of  America,  has  al- 
ready tabulated  the  names  and  addresses  of  a  hundred 
thousand  people  who  are  willing  and  eager  to  patronize 
any  great  play  that  may  be  set  before  them.  What 
can  these  people  do  to  win  the  privilege  of  seeing  the 
best  plays  of  the  present  period  adequately  acted  on 
the  stage?  As  conditions  stand  at  present,  there  is 
only  one  answer  to  this  question.  They  must  get  to- 


278     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

gether  and  produce  these  plays  themselves.  By  a  gen- 
eral and  democratic  insurrection,  they  must  counteract 
the  control  of  a  public-service  corporation  by  an 
oligarchy  that  has  not  given  them  the  service  they 
desire. 

The  only  apparent  impediment  to  such  a  revolution 
is  the  economic  problem.  If  our  millionaire  managers 
cannot  afford  to  show  the  American  public  the  best  that 
is  known  and  thought  in  the  drama  of  the  present 
period,  how  can  this  great  purpose  be  accomplished  by 
people  without  capital? 

But  the  oligarchs  who  now  control  our  theatre  risk 
more  than  is  required — in  the  hope  of  winning  more 
than  is  decreed.  They  waste  enormous  sums  of  money, 
for  rent,  for  scenery,  for  salaries,  which  a  democratic 
theatre  could  easily  afford  to  save.  It  costs  at  least 
thirty  thousand  dollars  to  raise  the  curtain  on  a  new 
show  at  the  Winter  Garden;  but  any  little  group  of 
lovers  of  the  drama  can  raise  the  curtain  on  a  wise  and 
lovely  play,  like  Barrie's  Alice  Sit-By-The-Fire,  for 
instance,  at  a  total  cost,  for  rent,  for  scenery,  for  sal- 
aries, of  less  than  five  hundred  dollars. 

There  is,  first  of  all,  the  cost  of  rent.  Metropolitan 
managers  count  always  on  the  patronage  of  the  casual 
theatre-goer — the  person  who,  after  a  good  dinner, 
wishes  merely,  as  the  phrase  is,  to  "  go  to  the  theatre," 
and  does  not  choose  deliberately  to  see  a  special  play. 
Hence,  to  catch  this  drifting  patronage,  the  theatres 
must  always  be  located  in  immediate  proximity  to  the 
best  hotels  and  restaurants.  A  theatre  so  situated  must 
occupy  a  large  parcel  of  very  valuable  real  estate ;  and 


the  normal  rent  of  such  a  site  necessitates  a  very  heavy 
overhead  charge  that  must  be  assumed  as  a  burden  by 
any  play  produced  in  such  a  theatre. 

To  diminish  this  excessive  burden  of  expenditure,  two 
means  are  possible  and  practical.  First,  the  theatre 
may  be  reduced  in  size;  or,  second,  it  may  be  moved 
away  from  the  most  expensive  district  of  the  city.  The 
first  of  these  adjustments  accounts  for  the  advent  of 
what  is  called  "  the  little  theatre,"  and  the  second  for 
the  advent  of  what  is  called,  in  Paris,  the  theatre  a  cote, 
or  the  theatre  on  the  side. 

Since  fewer  people  wish  to  patronize  great  plays  than 
wish  to  patronize  a  Winter  Garden  show,  it  is  entirely 
practical  to  house  them  in  a  smaller  auditorium,  and 
thereby  to  save,  in  a  city  of  considerable  size,  an  initial 
expenditure  of  many  thousands  of  dollars  for  real 
estate.  It  may  also  logically  be  assumed  that  those 
people  who  really  want  to  see  great  plays  will  be  willing 
to  travel  an  extra  quarter  of  an  hour  for  the  privilege 
of  doing  so.  It  is  entirely  practical  to  save  several 
thousand  dollars  more  by  placing  the  democratic  thea- 
tre in  a  less  expensive  district  of  the  city  than  that 
which  is  adjacent  to  the  best  hotels  and  restaurants. 

Turning  to  the  economic  problem  of  scenery,  it  must 
be  said  at  once  that  the  advantage  lies  heavily  upon  the 
side  of  a  democratic  insurrection.  The  suggestive  and 
decorative  type  of  scenery  which  in  recent  years  has 
been  developed  in  Germany  and  Russia  under  the  in- 
spiring influence  of  Gordon  Craig  is  not  only  much 
more  artistic,  but  much  less  expensive  than  the  realistic 
scenery  of  the  Victorian  period  which  is  still  retained 


280     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

by  the  gambling  oligarchs  in  their  desperate  endeavor 
to  give  the  public  what  they  think  the  public  wants. 
Now  that  the  way  has  been  shown  by  the  new  great 
artists  of  the  theatre,  any  one  with  half  an  eye  for  line 
and  color  can  make  a  set  so  inexpensively  that  men 
accustomed  only  to  big  productions  would  doubt  the 
evidence  and  would  insist  on  paying  more  money  for 
something  less  artistic  and  less  beautiful. 

In  the  third  place,  an  enormous  saving  may  be  made 
in  salaries  by  the  simple  expedient  of  producing  plays 
with  casts  of  amateur  or  semi-professional  actors. 
Even  though  it  be  immediately  granted  that  an  actor 
who  commands  a  salary  of  three  hundred  dollars  a  week 
is  likely  to  be  a  better  artist  than  an  actor  who  is 
willing  to  work  for  thirty  dollars  a  week — or  an  actor 
who  is  willing  to  work  for  nothing  at  all — it  must  still 
be  stated,  on  the  other  side,  that  those  who  really  love 
the  drama  would  rather  see  a  great  play  only  ade- 
quately acted  than  see  great  acting  in  a  silly 
play. 

To  sum  up  the  situation,  it  appears  that  the  thou- 
sands and  thousands  of  people  in  America  who  wish  to 
see  the  great  plays  of  the  present  period  adequately 
acted  on  the  stage  must  start  a  democratic  theatre 
of  their  own,  in  opposition  to  the  theatre  of  the 
oligarchic  managers ;  and  it  appears,  further,  that  this 
project  is  economically  feasible  by  the  elimination  of 
superfluous  extravagance  in  the  expenditure  for  sal- 
aries, for  scenery,  and  for  rent. 

The  soundness  of  this  theory  has  already  been  tested 
and  proved.  In  several  of  our  cities,  semi-professional 


A  DEMOCRATIC  INSURRECTION        281 

companies  in  little  theatres  on  the  side  have  already  put 
the  Broadway  managers  to  shame.  The  most  signal 
success  of  this  sort  is  that  of  the  Washington  Square 
Players  in  New  York.  This  organization  was  incorpo- 
rated by  a  little  group  of  lovers  of  the  drama  who 
desired  to  stimulate  and  to  develop  new  and  artistic 
methods  of  acting,  producing,  and  writing  for  the 
American  stage.  From  the  very  outset,  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  company  was  democratic,  and  it  welcomed 
to  its  membership  any  actor,  artist,  or  author  who  was 
sympathetic  with  its  aims.  The  project  of  the  Wash- 
ington Square  Players  has  been  to  produce  new  plays 
by  American  writers  and  important  plays  by  foreign 
dramatists  which  would  not  otherwise  have  been  granted 
a  hearing  in  New  York. 

During  the  first  season,  which  began  on  February  19, 
1915,  and  in  which  the  company  played  only  two  or 
three  evenings  a  week,  ten  one-act  plays  by  American 
writers  were  produced  and  four  by  foreign  authors. 
During  the  second  season,  which  began  on  October  4, 
1915,  and  lasted  till  the  end  of  May,  1916,  the  com- 
pany played  every  night  and  every  Saturday  afternoon. 
During  this  period  ten  new  plays  by  American  writers 
were  produced,  and  eight  by  foreign  authors. 

In  one  season  and  a  half,  these  thirty  one-act  plays 
— ten  by  European  dramatists  and  twenty  by  Amer- 
ican— were  adequately  set  before  the  public,  and  the 
charge  for  tickets  was  limited  to  fifty  cents  and  one 
dollar.  The  reader  may  wonder  how  it  has  been  pos- 
sible to  produce  so  many  plays,  at  such  a  small  charge 
for  admission,  without  any  endowment  to  begin  with, 


282     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

and  without  rolling  up  any  deficit  during  a  season  and 
a  half. 

The  Washington  Square  Players  contrived  to  dimin- 
ish the  excessive  cost  of  rent,  at  the  outset  of  their 
undertaking,  by  locating  in  a  little  theatre  on  the  side — 
the  Bandbox  Theatre,  in  Fifty-seventh  Street,  east  of 
Third  Avenue.  The  excessive  cost  of  scenery  was  easily 
eliminated  by  relying  on  the  artist-members  of  the  or- 
ganization to  supply  summary  and  decorative  settings 
for  the  love  of  doing  so.  The  scenic  settings  exhibited 
by  the  Washington  Square  Players  were  far  and  away 
the  most  artistic  that  were  exhibited  in  any  theatre  in 
New  York  in  1916;  yet  these  settings  cost,  upon  the 
average,  a  little  less  than  fifty  dollars  each. 

Again,  the  democratic  organization  of  this  company 
made  possible  a  great  saving  in  salaries.  The  leading 
actors  were  paid  only  thirty  dollars  a  week;  most  of  the 
performers  received  only  ten  dollars  a  week ;  and  many 
of  the  minor  parts  were  played  without  remuneration 
by  amateurs  of  independent  means  who  were  seeking  an 
opportunity  for  practice  on  the  stage.  No  royalties 
were  paid  to  any  of  the  authors.  The  American  play- 
wrights contributed  gladly  their  one-act  plays,  and  all 
the  foreign  plays  produced  were  out  of  copyright. 

This  detailed  examination  of  the  budget  of  the  Wash- 
ington Square  Players  reveals  one  or  two  conditions 
which  are  not  ideal;  but  the  general  conduct  of  the 
organization  has  been  of  enormous  service  to  all  lovers 
of  the  drama  in  New  York.  The  acting  which  has  been 
exhibited  at  the  Bandbox  for  fifty  cents  has  been,  in 
general,  inferior  to  the  acting  which  has  been  exhibited 


A  DEMOCRATIC  INSURRECTION       283 

on  Broadway  for  two  dollars ;  but  the  scenic  settings 
have  been  undeniably  superior,  and  the  choice  of  plays 
has  been  much  more  satisfactory.  Taking  into  con- 
sideration every  element  of  possible  enjoyment,  it  may 
be  said  without  reservation  that  this  company  has  con- 
ducted one  of  the  most  interesting  theatres  in  New 
York. 

The  valuable  work  which  has  been  accomplished  at 
the  Neighborhood  Playhouse,  in  the  heart  of  that  great 
district  of  plain  living  and  high  thinking  which  the 
patrons  of  the  theatres  along  "  The  Great  White 
Way  "  are  accustomed  to  refer  to  as  "  the  slums,"  must 
be  considered  in  a  slightly  different  category.  This 
exquisite  little  playhouse  was  presented  to  the  Henry 
Street  Settlement  by  the  Misses  Irene  and  Alice 
Lewisohn.  The  initial  item  of  rent  was  thereby  can- 
celed from  the  ledger.  Many  interesting  plays  have 
been  produced  by  a  well-trained  company  of  amateurs, 
composed  mainly  of  working  people  who  live  in  the 
neighborhood;  and  there  is,  therefore,  no  expense  for 
salaries.  The  scenery  and  costumes  are  designed  and 
executed  by  the  art  classes  of  the  Settlement.  Though 
always  adequate  and  often  exceptionally  beautiful,  they 
are  very  inexpensive.  The  Neighborhood  Players  have 
thus  been  enabled  to  present,  at  a  charge  for  tickets 
limited  to  twenty-five  and  fifty  cents,  a  large  number 
of  unusually  worthy  plays,  and  have  established  a  liv- 
ing theatre  in  a  district  which  had  been  totally  neglected 
in  the  past. 

But  the  work  which  has  been  done  in  the  metropolis 
by  such  organizations  as  the  Neighborhood  Players  and 


the  Washington  Square  Players  is  not,  by  any  means, 
unique;  it  is  important  mainly  as  an  indication  of  a 
general  and  democratic  insurrection  which  has  found 
expression  also  in  many  other  cities  of  this  country. 
Here  and  there  and  everywhere,  people  who  demand 
good  plays  are  taking  the  matter  into  their  own  hands 
and  producing  them  themselves. 

In  Chicago,  for  example,  one  of  the  most  interesting 
institutions  at  the  present  time  is  the  Little  Theatre, 
which  is  conducted  by  Maurice  Browne.  When  this 
theatre  was  founded,  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Browne  deliberately 
limited  their  own  salaries  to  the  living  wage  of  fifteen 
dollars  a  week,  and  by  this  economy  were  able  to  make 
productions  which  have  been  talked  about  beyond  the 
seas. 

Excellent  work  has  also  been  accomplished  at  Mrs. 
Lyman  Gale's  Toy  Theatre  in  Boston.  It  was  here  that 
Livingston  Platt  was  afforded  his  first  opportunity  to 
exercise  his  exquisite  art  in  designing  scenery  and  cos- 
tumes. Mr.  Platt  has  subsequently  been  employed  by 
Margaret  Anglin  to  design  the  sets  for  her  Shake- 
spearean repertory  and  her  productions  of  Greek 
tragedies.  But  it  should  always  be  remembered  that  it 
was  at  the  Toy  Theatre  that  Miss  Anglin  discovered 
this  gifted  artist. 

The  next  step  which  must  be  taken  in  furtherance  of 
the  democratic  insurrection  will  be  the  erection  of  a 
chain  of  little  theatres  in  various  cities,  so  that  an 
interchange  of  plays  and  companies  may  be  effected  be- 
tween one  city  and  another.  Already  there  are  indi- 
cations that  this  next  step  will  soon  be  taken.  In 


A  DEMOCRATIC  INSURRECTION        285 

Philadelphia,  for  instance,  a  movement  is  on  foot  to 
erect  an  Art  Alliance  building  in  Rittenhouse  Square 
which  shall  house  under  a  single  roof  all  the  art  societies 
of  the  city.  This  building  is  to  contain  a  theatre  which 
shall  always  be  available,  at  a  minimum  of  cost,  for  any 
adequate  performance  of  the  better  sort  of  drama.  In 
Buffalo,  also,  there  is  a  movement  to  erect  a  similar 
Art  Alliance  building  containing  a  little  theatre.  When 
these  two  institutions  are  established,  it  should  be  a 
simple  matter  to  arrange  an  interchange  of  worthy 
plays  between  Buffalo  and  Philadelphia. 

It  is  important,  also,  that  some  mention  should  be 
made  of  the  only  municipal  theatre  in  the  United  States, 
which  is  situated  in  Northampton,  Massachusetts.  The 
Academy  of  Music  in  that  city,  a  beautiful  and  well- 
appointed  building,  was  erected  and  owned  by  the  late 
Edward  H.  R.  Lyman ;  and  at  his  death  he  bequeathed 
it  to  his  fellow-citizens.  Throughout  the  season,  eight 
performances  a  week  are  given,  with  a  weekly  change  of 
bill,  by  a  resident  stock-company,  under  the  direction 
of  Jessie  Bonstelle  and  Bertram  Harrison.  The  major- 
ity of  the  plays  presented  are  pieces  which  have  already 
been  successful  in  New  York.  However,  under  the 
patronage  of  a  public-spirited  citizen,  Mr.  George  B. 
McCallum,  special  matinees  are  given  every  month  by 
the  Northampton  Players  in  a  comfortable  little  thea- 
tre in  his  house,  and  these  matinees  are  devoted  to  clas- 
sical examples  of  the  contemporary  drama. 

If  Northampton,  a  city  of  only  twenty  thousand 
inhabitants,  can  maintain  a  municipal  theatre,  there  is 
no  reason  why  the  theatre  should  not  be  established 


286     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

in  other  cities  as  a  public  institution.  If  the  Washing- 
ton Square  Players  can  develop  in  a  season  and  a 
half  the  most  interesting  theatre  in  New  York,  there 
is  no  reason  why  a  similar  undertaking  should  not  suc- 
ceed in  any  other  city. 

It  is  the  small  towns  of  this  country  that  suffer  most 
at  the  hands  of  the  oligarchs  who  conduct  the  theatre- 
business.  Only  third-  or  fourth-rate  productions  of 
unimportant  plays  whose  only  title  to  remembrance  is 
that  once,  when  they  were  acted  by  a  first-rate  com- 
pany, they  made  money  in  New  York,  are  sent  out  to 
the  one-night  stands ;  and,  if  the  people  in  these  towns 
really  want  to  see  the  best  contemporary  plays,  they 
must  produce  them  themselves. 

It  has  been  proved  already  that  this  undertaking  is 
not  impossible.  In  any  community  of  ten  thousand 
citizens  there  must  be  at  least  ten  people  who  can  act 
and  at  least  five  who  can  design  scenery  and  costumes. 
Artistic  ability  is  more  widespread  than  many  people 
know;  and  wherever  a  democratic  theatre  has  been 
started,  its  ranks  have  soon  been  crowded  by  applicants 
of  adequate  ability. 

To  see  great  plays  in  the  American  theatre,  our 
public  needs  only  to  deserve  to  see  them;  but  this 
deserving  must  express  itself  not  passively,  but  actively. 
We  must  no  longer  rest  contented  with  an  oligarchic 
conduct  of  what  ought  to  be  a  public-service  corpora- 
tion. We  must  demand  a  drama  of  the  people,  by  the 
people,  for  the  people;  and  we  must  toil  for  it  until 
we  get  it. 


A  DEMOCRATIC  INSURRECTION        287 

n 

There  are  many  indications  which  tend  to  show  that 
a  newer  and  a  nobler  chapter  in  the  history  of  the 
American  theatre  is  shortly  to  be  opened,  and  that  the 
only  fitting  caption  for  the  chapter  that  is  being  closed 
and  set  away  forever  must  be  "  The  Passing  of  Broad- 
way." 

The  meaning  of  "  Broadway  " — like  the  meaning  of 
"  Bohemia  " — is  less  important  when  the  word  is  used 
to  designate  a  geographical  location  than  when  it  is 
employed  to  indicate  an  atmosphere  and  attitude  of 
mind.  Broadway — upon  the  map — is  nothing  but  a 
narrow,  winding,  and  unlovely  thoroughfare ;  but  the 
Broadway  attitude  of  mind — a  narrow,  winding,  and 
unlovely  attitude — is  a  phenomenon  that  calls  for  care- 
ful study.  A  mood  is  more  important  than  a  street, 
even  as  the  law  of  gravitation  is  more  important  than 
a  falling  apple.  Thus  the  word  "  Broadway  "  takes 
on  a  larger  meaning  when  it  ceases  to  suggest  a  place 
and  begins  to  be  employed  as  the  outward  and  visible 
embodiment  of  an  idea. 

The  Broadway  attitude  of  mind  is  the  attitude  of  a 
little  group  of  never  more  than  fifty  thousand  people 
that  swarm  and  flutter  in  a  futile  circle  around  that 
tiny  point  upon  the  map  which  marks  the  intersection 
of  Broadway  and  Forty-second  Street.  The  life  of  this 
little  group  of  people  is  not  related  logically  to  the 
life  of  that  great  city  which  envelops  and  ignores  it; 
and  it  is  even  less  related  to  the  life  of  America  at 
large.  America  is  one  thing;  New  York  is  something 


288      PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

different ;  and  Broadway — as  Mawruss  Perlmutter 
might  be  imagined  to  remark — is  "  something  else 
again." 

The  denizens  of  Broadway  lead  a  life  that  is  utterly 
artificial.  They  begin  the  day's  experience  with  a  heavy 
and  exceedingly  expensive  dinner  at  some  glittering 
hotel  or  restaurant.  Then  they  buy  tickets  for  some 
"  show  "  that  is  recommended  to  them  by  an  agency. 
After  sitting  through  this  "  show  " — which,  as  chance 
may  fall,  they  deem  to  be  a  "  knock-out  "  or  a  "  flivver  " 
— they  finish  out  the  difficult  adventure  with  supper 
and  a  dance  at  some  noisy  and  meretricious  cabaret. 
These  people  never  notice  the  sun  and  moon  and  stars, 
because  their  life  is  lighted  with  a  million  incandescent 
lamps;  but  the  Great  White  Way,  which  tempts  their 
feet  to  wander,  is  nothing  but  a  tinsel  imitation  of  that 
starry  track  which  sweeps  across  the  unimpeded  and 
immeasurable  sky. 

The  population  of  Broadway  is  temporary  and  un- 
stable. The  people  of  New  York  do  not  participate,  in 
any  noticeable  number,  in  the  puny  flutterings  of  this 
tiny  inner  circle.  Broadway  does  not  attract  them. 
People  of  any  standing  in  New  York  society  have  homes 
or  clubs  to  go  to ;  and  they  do  not  have  to  entertain 
their  friends  at  a  public  and  ill-mannered  restaurant  or 
cabaret.  They  do  not  even  have  to  go  to  the  theatre — 
if  their  purpose  be  to  kill  an  evening — unless  the  theatre 
offers  them  a  spectacle  that  is  unusually  worthy  of  at- 
tention. The  Broadway  populace  is  made  up  mainly 
of  transient  visitors  from  other  cities  who  are  trying, 
rather  desperately,  to  "  see  New  York,"  because  they  do 


A  DEMOCRATIC  INSURRECTION       289 

not  live  there.  They  "  see  New  York  "  by  visiting  a 
show  or  two  and  a  hotel  dining-room  or  two,  and  their 
subsequent  impressions  of  the  daily  life  of  the  metrop- 
olis are  founded  on  the  evidence  of  these  adventures. 

These  people  are  not  natives  of  New  York,  and 
neither  are  they  representatives  of  America  at  large. 
They  have  ceased  to  be  representative  of  Omaha  or 
Oshkosh  because,  for  the  moment,  they  have  divorced 
themselves  in  mood  from  their  traditional  locality  and 
embarked  upon  a  holiday  adventure.  They  are  in  an 
artificial  state  of  mind.  People  from  Peoria  who  spend 
fantastic  sums  of  money  for  the  privilege  of  sitting  at 
adjacent  tables  in  a  restaurant  and  regarding  each 
other  as  "  typical  New  Yorkers  "  do  not  constitute  a 
public  that  is  representative  of  anything  that  can  rea- 
sonably be  related  to  the  reality  of  life  at  large. 

For  nearly  twenty  years  our  theatre  has  been  edited 
to  entertain  this  trivial  and  transient  population.  Com- 
mercial and  non-commercial  travelers  enjoying  a  tem- 
porary sense  of  playing  hookey  from  their  homes  have 
set  the  tone  of  taste  for  our  American  productions. 
Thoso  enterprising  managers  who,  at  the  outset  of  the 
present  century,  organized  the  theatres  of  America 
into  a  gigantic  trust  and  a  scarcely  less  gigantic 
counter-trust,  were  men  whose  vision  of  this  country 
was  limited  to  the  tiny  circle  that  is  centered  in  Times 
Square.  They  convinced  themselves  that  the  surest 
way  of  making  money  in  the  theatre  was  not  to  produce 
plays  about  the  life  of  America  for  the  public  of 
America,  nor  even  to  produce  plays  about  the  life  of 
New  York  for  the  public  of  New  York,  but  to  produce 


290     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

plays  about  the  life  of  Broadway  for  the  public  of 
Broadway. 

Because  of  this  predisposition  of  the  managers,  our 
playwrights  have  been  required  to  conform  to  a  stand- 
ard of  taste  that  has  been  extremely  stultifying.  To 
earn  the  privilege  of  making  an  appeal  to  America  at 
large,  they  have  been  required,  first  of  all,  to  secure  a 
Broadway  production  and  to  achieve  a  Broadway  suc- 
cess. If  an  author  has  imagined  something  too  simple 
and  too  beautiful  and  true  to  fit  the  comprehension  of 
the  fifty  thousand  flutterers  who  swarm  around  Times 
Square,  he  has  been  denied  the  privilege  of  talking  to 
a  saner  and  serener  public. 

It  would  not  be  fair  to  say,  or  to  suggest,  that  Broad- 
way has  given  nothing  to  the  theatre  that  has  been 
worth  while.  Broadway  cares  little  about  beauty  and 
rather  less  than  little  about  truth;  but  it  takes  a  lively 
interest  in  cleverness,  and  it  has  a  well-developed  sense 
of  humor.  Several  of  our  Broadway  plays  have  been 
very  good  plays  of  their  kind ;  and  in  the  person  of  one 
man  at  least — the  celebrated  Mr.  George  M.  Cohan — 
Broadway  has  developed  a  dramatist  of  quite  extraordi- 
nary talent.  Several  other  playwrights — Mr.  Winchell 
Smith,  for  instance — have  done  artistic  work  while  fol- 
lowing the  formula  laid  out  by  Mr.  Cohan;  but  the 
trouble  is  that  these  artists  of  Broadway  were  soon 
surrounded  by  an  over-eager  legion  of  subsidiaries,  until 
our  stage  was  flooded  with  second-  and  third-rate  imi- 
tations of  the  Cohan  type  of  play. 

Half  a  dozen  years  ago,  a  big  majority  of  all  the 
plays  that  ran  for  more  than  a  hundred  nights  in  New 


A  DEMOCRATIC  INSURRECTION        291 

York  were  plays  in  which  the  Broadway  attitude  of 
mind  was  formulated  for  the  entertainment  of  the  float- 
ing population  of  Times  Square.  But  a  definitive 
feature  of  more  recent  seasons  is  the  triumph  of  a  new 
tendency  in  the  American  theatre  which  foretells  the 
final  passing  of  the  devastating  dominance  of  the 
Broadway  attitude  of  mind.  A  new  group  of  producing 
managers — led  by  such  men  as  Mr.  Winthrop  Ames, 
Mr.  Arthur  Hopkins,  and  Mr.  John  D.  Williams — has 
successfully  assaulted  the  long-standing  and  hitherto 
apparently  impregnable  position  of  the  Broadway  mag- 
nates. These  men  have  quietly  and  modestly  unfurled 
a  flag  that  bears  the  simple,  but  unconquerable  legend — 
"  Beauty  is  Truth,  Truth  Beauty."  Instead  of  seeking 
what  the  public  wants,  they  are  seeking  what  the  public 
needs ;  and  the  public  has  risen  up  and  praised  them 
for  their  insight  and  their  enterprise.  These  managers 
— whose  vision  is  by  no  means  circumscribed  within  the 
limits  of  the  tiny  circle  that  is  centered  in  Times 
Square — have  been  supported  strongly  by  many  sturdy 
little  groups  of  insurrectionists — like  the  Washington 
Square  Players  and  the  Portmanteau  Players — who 
have  insisted,  from  the  very  outset  of  their  activities, 
that  the  proper  thing  to  ask  about  a  play  is  not  whether 
the  people  of  Broadway  will  like  it,  but  whether  the 
people  who  do  not  like  Broadway  will  like  it. 


XXX 

LITERATURE  AND  THE  DRAMA 


ONE  reason  for  the  regrettable  divorce  between  Amer- 
ican literature  and  American  drama  is  that  our  leading 
novelists  and  our  leading  playwrights  live  in  different 
worlds  and  rarely  meet  each  other.  In  France,  where 
every  playwright  is  a  man  of  letters  and  every  man  of 
letters  understands  the  theatre,  it  would  be  impossible 
for  a  leading  dramatist,  like  the  late  Paul  Hervieu,  not 
to  know  a  literary  leader,  like  M.  Anatole  France.  It 
may  safely  be  assumed,  without  inquiry,  that  M.  Brieux 
and  M.  Paul  Bourget  are  acquainted  with  each  other, 
and  that  each  of  them  appreciates  the  other's  art.  But, 
in  America,  it  may  just  as  safely  be  assumed  that  Mr. 
George  M.  Cohan  has  never  met  Mr.  William  Dean 
Howells  and  that  Mr.  George  Broadhurst  is  not  per- 
sonally acquainted  with  Mrs.  Edith  Wharton.  Our 
leading  literary  writers  do  not  understand  the  theatre, 
and  several  of  our  most  successful  playwrights  are 
unfamiliar  with  our  literature.  They  live,  as  has  been 
said,  in  different  worlds. 

The  world  of  our  American  novelists  is  immeasurably 
broader  and  deeper  than  the  world  of  our  American 

292 


LITERATURE  AND  THE  DRAMA       293 

playwrights.  In  the  entire  history  of  our  theatre,  there 
is  no  dramatist  who  has  at  all  approached  the  world- 
significance  of  Hawthorne,  or  Mark  Twain,  or  Mr. 
Henry  James.  If  America  can  make  great  literature, 
if  it  can  give  to  the  world  a  Walt  Whitman  and  a  Bret 
Harte,  why  should  it  be  impossible  for  America  to  make 
great  drama?  The  answer  is  that  our  men  of  the 
theatre  have  not  yet  learned  to  live  as  sanely  and  to 
work  as  honestly  as  have  our  men  of  letters. 

It  is  a  curious  and  interesting  fact  that,  whereas  nine- 
tenths  of  all  our  leading  playwrights  live  in  New  York 
and  write  about  Times  Square  for  the  entertainment  of 
the  metropolis,  the  majority  of  our  novelists  live  else- 
where and  write  about  some  little  section  of  America 
for  the  edification  of  America  at  large.  The  main 
reason  why  our  literature  is  better  than  our  drama 
is  that  art  must  be  planted  in  the  soil  and  grow 
up  as  a  miracle  of  nature  bursting  into  flower  and 
fruit,  and  that  there  isn't  any  soil  in  Times  Square, 
but  only  paving-stones.  Our  American  literature  has 
discovered  America,  in  all  its  variety  and  multiplicity. 
Our  novelists  have  written  faithful  and  illuminating 
records  of  life  in  Maine  and  Massachusetts,  in  Georgia, 
Tennessee,  and  Louisiana,  in  Illinois  and  Indiana,  in 
Arizona  and  California;  but  our  playwrights,  for  the 
most  part,  have  written  records  of  America  only  as 
America  is  seen  from  the  point  of  view  of  Broadway  and 
Forty-second  Street.  Our  drama  is  metropolitan,  and 
therefore  un-American;  for  what  do  they  know  of 
America  who  only  know  Broadway? 

Many  years  ago,  Mr.  Augustus  Thomas  started  out 


294     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

with  the  adventurous  idea  of  writing  a  series  of  plays 
that  should  be  localized  in  different  states ;  but,  after 
having  dealt  with  Alabama,  Missouri,  Arizona,  and 
Colorado,  he  "  discovered  "  the  philosophy  of  Bishop 
Berkeley  and  renounced  his  self-appointed  task  of  ob- 
servation to  embark  upon  the  mystic  seas  of  abstract 
speculation.  Just  for  a  handful  of  culture  he  left  us ; 
and  no  successor  has  arisen  to  strive  earnestly  to  make 
the  map  of  our  American  drama  coextensive  with  the 
map  of  our  American  literature. 

The  average  American  novelist  who  attains  distinc- 
tion lives  for  many  years  in  the  locality  where  he  was 
born,  studies  the  people  about  him,  and  interprets  their 
peculiarities  to  the  world  at  large.  His  work  is  alive 
because  it  is  local;  and — despite  the  paradox — it  is 
national  because  it  is  provincial.  But  the  average 
American  playwright  who  attains  distinction  moves  to 
New  York  in  his  early  twenties,  becomes  associated  with 
the  theatre,  and  thereafter  interprets  only  the  thoughts 
and  feelings  of  Broadway  to  the  public  of  Broadway. 
He  ceases  to  be  national  by  becoming  metropolitan; 
he  ceases  to  see  over  the  footlights  into  the  illimitable 
domain  of  life. 

This  is  the  reason  why  our  American  drama  shows 
such  a  paucity  of  genre  studies,  although  the  intimate 
depiction  of  localities  has  always  been  a  strong  point 
in  our  American  literature.  Our  novelists,  who  study 
life,  know  nothing  of  our  theatre ;  and  our  playwrights, 
who  study  the  theatre,  know  nothing  of  our  life.  This 
antithesis  may  overstate  the  facts,  but  it  is  based  upon 
«.  sound  distinction.  Hawthorne,  who  could  not  make 


LITERATURE  AND  THE  DRAMA       295 

a  play,  was  so  familiar  with  the  little  town  of  Salem, 
Massachusetts,  that  when  he  wrote  about  it  in  The 
Scarlet  Letter  he  achieved  a  contribution  to  the  litera- 
ture of  the  world;  but  Mr.  William  Gillette,  who  can 
make  plays,  has  never  studied  any  aspect  of  American 
life  as  thoroughly  as  Hawthorne  studied  the  life  of 
colonial  New  England. 

When  we  try  to  make  a  genre  play  in  America,  we 
usually  have  to  call  into  collaboration  two  different 
artists  who  do  not  really  understand  each  other — a 
novelist,  who  understands  the  life  to  be  depicted,  and 
a  dramatist,  who  understands  the  exigencies  of  the 
stage.  The  first  supplies  the  material,  and  the  second 
supplies  the  method  of  the  play.  The  result  is  a  hybrid 
product  which,  though  ceasing  to  be  literature,  has 
not  attained  the  dignity  of  drama.  It  is  as  if  the 
material  for  Hindle  Wakes  had  been  supplied  by  a 
novelist  from  Manchester  and  the  play  had  been  built 
and  written  by  a  London  dramatist  who  had  never  been 
in  Lancashire.  If  ever  we  are  to  have  a  real  drama 
of  New  Orleans,  it  must  be  written  at  first  hand  by  a 
playwright  as  familiar  with  life  among  the  Creoles  as 
Mr.  George  W.  Cable :  it  must  not  be  dramatized  from 
one  of  Mr.  Cable's  stories  by  a  playwright  who  has 
never  ventured  south  of  Philadelphia.  If  we  could 
bring  all  our  novelists  to  New  York  and  put  them 
through  a  practical  course  in  theatrical  construction, 
and  if,  at  the  same  time,  we  could  exile  all  our  play- 
wrights from  New  York  and  put  them  through  a  prac- 
tical course  in  living  and  in  observation,  we  might 
eventually  bring  about  a  marriage  between  American 


296     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

literature  and  American  drama,  and  create  a  real  and 
true  dramatic  literature. 

n 

In  recent  years,  the  locus  of  the  best  dramatic  crea- 
tion in  the  British  Isles  has  been  shifted  from  London 
to  the  provinces.  Remarkable  and  richly  human  plays 
have  come  from  Lancashire  (like  Stanley  Houghton's 
Hindle  Wakes},  from  Yorkshire"  (like  Githa  Sowerby's 
Rutherford  and  Son),  from  Wales  (like  Change,  by  J. 
O.  Francis),  from  Scotland  (like  Graham  Moffat's 
Bunty  Pulls  the  Strings),  and  from  Ireland,  where  half 
a  dozen  worthy  dramatists  have  spurred  each  other  on 
to  a  very  ecstasy  of  productivity;  but,  in  the  same 
period,  scarcely  any  richly  human  plays  have  come  from 
London  playwrights  writing  about  London  life.  Thus, 
although  the  British  theatre  is  still  centered  of  neces- 
sity in  the  metropolis,  the  British  drama  has  lately 
found  its  most  fruitful  source  of  genuine  inspiration 
elsewhere. 

The  practical  reason  for  this  change  is  not  difficult  to 
find.  The  greatest  drama  is  called  into  being  by  the 
greatest  theatre;  and  the  two  greatest  theatres  in  the 
British  Isles  at  present  are  the  Abbey  Theatre  in  Dub- 
lin and  the  Gaiety  Theatre  in  Manchester.  In  both  of 
these  institutions — for  they  are  worthy  of  that  dignified 
and  lofty  word — the  repertory  system  is  maintained, 
and  every  encouragement  is  offered  to  new  authors  to  do 
their  very  best,  regardless  of  commercial  consequences. 
The  London  theatres,  like  the  theatres  of  New  York, 
acknowledge  the  existence  of  new  playwrights  only  after 


LITERATURE  AND  THE  DRAMA       297 

their  existence  has  been  proved;  but  both  Miss  Horni- 
man  and  Lady  Gregory  go  out  into  the  highways  and 
hedges,  and  find  new  playwrights,  and  compel  them  to 
come  within  the  theatre.  Thus  Miss  Horniman  dis- 
covered Stanley  Houghton,  encouraged  him  to  write  his 
masterpiece,  and  made  him  famous  throughout  the 
world,  at  an  age  when  it  would  have  been  extremely 
difficult  for  him  to  compel  a  recognition  of  his  worth 
in  the  metropolis. 

But,  regardless  of  how  and  why  the  change  has  been 
effected,  it  must  be  said  emphatically  that  this  shift 
in  the  dramatic  locus  of  the  British  Isles  has  been  a 
good  thing  for  the  British  drama.  It  has  brought  the 
British  drama  closer  to  the  soil,  made  it  more  real 
and  more  sincere,  freed  it  almost  utterly  from  artifice, 
and  in  making  it  more  local  has  made  it  in  the  deepest 
sense  more  national. 

A  peculiarity  of  modern  progress  has  been  a  leveling 
of  natonal  distinctions  in  the  life  of  the  biggest  cities 
in  the  world.  Immediate  communication  by  telegraph 
and  constant  travel  by  rapid  transit  have  caused  great 
cities  to  conform  to  a  compromise  of  custom  that  is  not 
national  but  cosmopolitan.  Life,  on  any  of  the  higher 
levels  of  society,  no  longer  differs  greatly  in  London 
or  New  York,  in  Paris  or  Berlin,  in  Petrograd  or  Rome. 
The  seeker  after  traits  that  are  definitively  national 
must  plunge  into  the  provinces.  To  see  France  the 
traveler  must  keep  away  from  Paris,  and  to  see  England 
he  must  turn  his  back  on  London.  New  York  is  now 
the  least  American  of  American  cities,  for  the  very 
reason  that  it  has  become  the  most  cosmopolitan.  A 


298     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

metropolis,  acquiring  international  importance,  ceases 
to  be  national. 

The  greatest  drama  of  any  nation  must  always  be  a 
national  drama ;  and  this  is  only  another  way  of  saying 
that,  in  this  present  period,  the  greatest  drama  must 
tend  more  and  more  to  be  provincial.  A  truly  English 
drama  must  now  be  sought  for,  not  so  much  in  May- 
fair  nor  in  Belgravia,  as  in  Lancashire  or  Yorkshire 
or  some  other  of  the  rural  counties.  Hence  the  field 
that  Miss  Horniman  has  staked  out  for  the  rising 
writers  of  provincial  Manchester  is  a  field  in  reality 
more  fertile  than  that  cosmopolitan  and  trampled  tract 
that  is  offered  to  the  London  dramatist. 

This  fact  is  of  emphatic  interest  to  those  of  us  who 
are  seriously  concerned  with  the  development  of  a  native 
drama  in  America.  The  chief  difficulty  that  impedes 
the  progress  of  the  American  drama  at  the  present  time 
is  the  fact  that  nearly  all  our  plays  are  written  in 
New  York  and  written  from  the  New  York  point  of 
view.  New  York  is  not  America:  New  York  is  not 
even — as  has  been  said  before — American :  to  see  Amer- 
ica only  as  it  is  superficially  and  superciliously  seen  in 
the  metropolis  is  not  to  see  America  at  all.  For  a  true 
interpretation  of  what  is  most  definitively  national  in 
our  national  life,  we  should  look  to  the  provinces ;  and 
this  we  have  not  done,  except  in  a  few  extraordinary 
compositions  like  Children  of  Earth,  by  Alice  Brown. 
Many  of  our  plays — the  majority,  perhaps — are  set  in 
little  cities;  but  in  these  plays  we  do  not  genuinely 
study  the  life  of  little  cities,  we  merely  transfer  to  a 
different  locality  the  life  that  has  been  studied  in  Times 


LITERATURE  AND  THE  DRAMA       299 

Square.  Mr.  George  M.  Cohan's  practice  is  a  case  in 
point.  Such  plays  as  Hit-the-Trail  Holliday,  Broad- 
way Jones,  and  Get-Rich-Quick  Wallingford  are  set  in 
provincial  towns ;  but  nearly  all  the  characters  behave 
as  Times  Square  people  would  behave  if  transported  to 
a  little  city,  and  not  at  all  as  natives  of  a  little  city 
would  behave.  Our  playwrights  tread  the  narrow  lane 
that  is  bounded  by  the  buildings  of  Broadway;  but 
they  do  not  fare  beyond  the  precincts  of  Manhattan 
Island,  to  settle  down  and  look  about  with  open  eyes, 
until  they  can  achieve  the  miracle  of  discovering 
America. 


XXXI 

A  SCHEME  FOR  A  STOCK  COMPANY 

MY  Saturday  morning  course  in  the  Contemporary 
Drama  at  Columbia  University  is  attended  by  a  hun- 
dred and  fifty  students,  of  both  sexes,  whose  ages  range 
from  seventeen  to  sixty.  They  come  from  many  differ- 
ent sections  of  the  country,  and  may  be  regarded  as 
fairly  representative  of  the  sort  of  public  that  is  par- 
ticularly interested  in  the  contemporary  theatre. 
Every  now  and  then,  before  I  bring  up  for  discussion 
some  unusually  popular  and  celebrated  play — such  as 
The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray,  or  Candida,  or  Mrs. 
Dane's  Defence,  or  Alice  Sit-By-The-Fire — I  ask  the 
class  to  tell  me  how  many  of  its  members  have  seen  the 
piece  in  question ;  and  I  am  always  staggered  and  dis- 
heartened when  only  five  or  six  hands  go  up  in  the 
entire  room.  More  than  nine-tenths  of  these  particu- 
larly interested  students  of*  the  stage  have  never  actu- 
ally seen  these  notable  and  standard  plays,  because 
they  did  not  happen  to  be  living  in  New  York  in  those 
seasons  when  these  pieces  were  first  set  before  the  public. 
It  is  only  reasonable  to  suppose  that  the  plight  of  my 
students  is  not  at  all  exceptional,  and  to  assume  that 
there  are  thousands  of  other  people  in  New  York  who, 
though  seriously  interested  in  the  best  that  has  been 

300 


A  SCHEME  FOR  A  STOCK  COMPANY     301 

thought  and  said  in  the  contemporary  drama,  have 
missed  their  only  opportunity  for  seeing  several  of  the 
most  celebrated  plays  of  recent  years. 

It  is  only  in  the  English-speaking  theatre  that  great 
plays  are  utterly  withdrawn  from  currency  as  soon  as 
they  have  come  to  be  regarded — as  least  in  a  restricted 
sense — as  classical.  Our  theatre  is  astonishingly  waste- 
ful. It  tosses  away  to  undeserved  oblivion  the  best 
plays  of  the  best  playwrights  it  has  called  into  its  serv- 
ice. The  theatre  is  conducted  otherwise  in  all  the 
countries  of  continental  Europe.  If  a  great  play  hap- 
pens to  be  written  by  a  Frenchman,  a  German,  a  Rus- 
sian, an  Italian,  a  Norwegian,  or  a  Spaniard,  it  is  not 
thrown  carelessly  into  the  scrap-basket  as  soon  as  its 
initial  run  has  been  completed;  it  is  permanently  pre- 
served, as  a  part  of  the  dramatic  repertory  of  the 
nation  that  has  produced  it.  For  many  years,  it  will 
be  acted  ten  or  twenty  times  a  season ;  and  then,  for 
half  a  century,  it  will  be  acted  three  or  four  times  every 
year ;  for  any  play  which,  at  the  outset,  has  come  into 
the  theatre  trailing  clouds  of  glory  and  display- 
ing intimations  of  immortality  is  a  play  that  no 
continental  nation  can  willingly  permit  to  be  for- 
gotten. 

But,  in  the  English-speaking  theatre,  the  career  of  a 
great  play  is  very  different  from  this.  At  the  outset,  it 
may  perhaps  be  acted  for  an  entire  season  in  London 
or  New  York ;  the  next  year,  it  may  be  sent  "  on  the 
road "  in  the  United  States  or  on  a  tour  of  "  the 
provinces  "  in  England ;  and,  subsequently  still,  it  may 
be  acted  fitfully  by  half  a  hundred  cheap  stock  com- 


302     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

panics  in  little  towns :  but  after  that,  the  play  is  thrown 
away  and  never  acted  any  more. 

Since  the  modern  English  drama  was  inaugurated  by 
Sir  Arthur  Pinero  in  1893  [the  date  of  the  initial  pro- 
duction of  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray\,  at  least  a 
hundred  plays  have  been  written  in  the  English  lan- 
guage that  are  worthy  of  being  seen  and  studied  again 
and  yet  again;  yet  nowhere  in  the  English-speaking 
world  does  there  exist  a  theatre  that  is  dedicated  to  the 
endeavor  to  keep  these  plays  before  the  public. 

Something,  manifestly,  should  be  done  to  remedy 
this  "  great  refusal "  of  our  theatre  to  recognize  and 
reverence  the  accomplished  fact  of  greatness.  Some 
Villon  should  arise,  to  chant  a  tragical  ballade  demand- 
ing an  answer  to  the  question,  "  Where  are  the  plays  of 
yesteryear?"  .  .  .  Man  and  Superman,  The  Mollusc, 
Mid-Channel,  Michael  and  His  Lost  Angel,  Hindle 
Wakes,  The  Admirable  Crichton — why  should  plays  so 
eminent  as  these  be  left  to  gather  dust  upon  the  shelf 
when  they  might  be  gathering  applause  behind  the  foot- 
lights? 

The  answer  is  that  neither  in  England  nor  in  Amer- 
ica does  there  exist  a  national  theatre — like  the  Theatre 
Fran9ais — which  has  been  chartered  to  perpetuate  the 
milestones  and  the  monuments  of  the  dramaturgic 
genius  of  the  nation.  Our  people,  furthermore,  are 
singularly  lacking  in  the  instinct  for  conservation.  In 
America,  at  least,  we  have  no  past ;  and  this  is  probably 
the  reason  why  we  overvalue  the  present  and  bet  too 
heavily  upon  the  future.  We  lose  our  breath  in  chasing 
the  elusive  light  of  novelty,  and  lack  serenity  to  settle 


A  SCHEME  FOR  A  STOCK  COMPANY     303 

down  and  contemplate  the  landmarks  of  the  road  that 
we  have  traveled. 

It  has  been  proved  in  practice  that  the  repertory 
system — which  works  easily  and  economically  in  the 
national  and  municipal  theatres  of  France  and  Ger- 
many— cannot  be  imposed  successfully  upon  the  public 
of  New  York.  Our  people  are  not  accustomed  to  a 
change  of  bill  from  night  to  night ;  they  expect  the  run 
of  any  play — however  long  or  short  its  period — to  be, 
at  least,  continuous ;  and  the  experience  of  Mr.  Win- 
throp  Ames  at  the  New  Theatre,  and  Mr.  Granville 
Barker  at  Wallack's,  and  Miss  Grace  George  at  the 
Playhouse,  convinced  all  three  of  these  experimenting 
managers  that  any  change  of  program  between  a  Mon- 
day and  a  Saturday  was  disconcerting  and  discourag- 
ing to  the  ticket-buying  public.  People  who  came  to 
the  box-office  with  money  in  their  hands  to  buy  tickets 
for  a  certain  play  would  go  away  again  when  they 
discovered  that  another  piece  was  to  be  given  on  the 
night  in  question.  But  no  experimental  manager  has 
yet  discovered  an  objection  to  a  frequent  change  of 
program,  provided  that  the  run  of  each  successive 
play  shall  be  continuous,  and  provided  also  that  the 
date  for  each  successive  change  of  bill  shall  be  clearly 
and  emphatically  impressed  upon  the  public. 

We  have  not  had  a  first-class  stock  company  in  New 
York  for  more  than  a  dozen  years.  Is  there  any  ir- 
remediable reason  why  such  a  company  should  not  be 
organized  at  present,  for  the  specific  purpose  of  recall- 
ing to  the  attention  of  the  theatre-going  public  a  series 
of  great  plays  by  great  authors — all  of  which  have  been 


304     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

written  since  1893  [and  therefore  in  conformity  with 
the  conventions  of  the  contemporary  theatre],  and  all 
of  which  have  been  written  by  British  or  American 
authors  [and  therefore  in  conformity  with  standards 
of  taste  to  which  our  theatre-going  public  is  accus- 
tomed] ;  is  there  any  real  reason  why  a  stock  company, 
that  should  never  present  a  single  play  which  had  not 
already  been  approved  by  the  public  and  praised  by 
every  critic  as  a  masterpiece,  should  fail  to  be  sup- 
ported by  the  thousands  and  thousands  of  people  who 
are  interested  eagerly  in  studying  the  best  that  has  been 
thought  and  said  in  the  contemporary  drama? 

First  of  all,  it  would  be  necessary  to  rent  a  theatre 
outright  for  a  season  of  thirty  weeks,  beginning  in 
October.  Perhaps  some  semi-abandoned  playhouse  that 
is  not  so  very  distant  from  the  center  of  the  theatre  dis- 
trict— like  the  Garrick,  for  example — might  be  secured 
at  a  rental  that  would  be  comparatively  low.  Next, 
it  would  be  necessary  to  assemble  a  well-balanced  com- 
pany of  experienced  professional  actors.  The  acting 
should  be  of  a  high  order  of  excellence ;  and  there  should 
be  no  dallying  with  beginners  or  with  amateurs.  That 
it  is  not  by  any  means  impossible  to  collect  the  sort  of 
company  that  I  have  in  mind  was  proved  by  Mr. 
Winthrop  Ames  in  his  experiment  at  the  New  Theatre 
and  again  by  Miss  Grace  George  in  her  more  recent 
experiment  at  the  Playhouse. 

During  the  season  of  thirty  weeks,  precisely  fifteen 
plays  should  be  produced,  and  each  play  should  be 
performed  two  weeks,  and  two  weeks  only,  regardless 
of  its  comparative  success  or  failure.  The  entire  pro- 


A  SCHEME  FOR  A  STOCK  COMPANY     305 

gram  of  fifteen  plays  to  be  presented  should  be  an- 
nounced before  the  beginning  of  the  season,  and  sub- 
scriptions should  be  asked  for  on  the  strength  of  this 
announcement.  Every  item  on  the  list,  without  excep- 
tion, should  be  a  play  originally  written  in  the  English 
language,  since  1892,  by  some  author  of  acknowledged 
excellence — a  play,  moreover,  which  ran  for  many 
weeks  or  months  when  it  was  first  produced,  and  is  now 
regarded  by  a  consensus  of  both  popular  and  critical 
opinion  as  a  masterpiece  according  to  its  kind. 

These  requirements  are  high;  but  it  is  by  no  means 
difficult  to  find  plays  that  fulfil  them.  Here,  for  in- 
stance, is  a  list  of  fifteen  plays,  of  many  kinds,  that 
might  be  offered  as  the  program  for  the  initial  season : — 
The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray  and  The  Gay  Lord  Quex, 
by  Sir  Arthur  Pinero;  Mrs.  Dane's  Defence,  by  Henry 
Arthur  Jones ;  Candida  and  Man  and  Superman,  by 
George  Bernard  Shaw;  The  Admirable  Crichton  and 
Alice  Sit-By-The-Fire,  by  Sir  James  Matthew  Barrie ; 
The  Mollusc,  by  Hubert  Henry  Davies;  The  Silver 
Box,  by  John  Galsworthy;  Don,  by  Rudolf  Besier; 
Hindle  Wakes,  by  Stanley  Houghton;  The  Easiest 
Way,  by  Eugene  Walter ;  The  Truth,  by  Clyde  Fitch ; 
The  Witching  Hour,  by  Augustus  Thomas;  and  The 
Poor  Little  Rich  Girl,  by  Eleanor  Gates. 

This  list  has  been  written  rapidly  and  almost  at 
random ;  and  it  would  be  very  easy  to  draw  up  several 
other  programs  of  fifteen  well-remembered  plays  that 
would  be  equally  attractive.  If  a  stock  company  of 
experienced  and  well-known  actors  should  offer  to  pro- 
duce these  fifteen  plays  [or  fifteen  other  plays  of  equal 


306     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

interest]  in  thirty  weeks,  would  it  be  very  difficult  to 
secure  subscriptions  for  the  season  on  the  strength  of 
this  announcement?  The  public  would  be  assured  in 
advance  that  every  play  would  be  worth  seeing,  and 
that  every  play  would  be  well  acted;  and  the  manage- 
ment would  be  certain  in  advance  that  every  play  would 
be  reviewed  with  critical  approval  by  a  press  that  could 
be  counted  on,  for  once,  to  be  unanimous. 

Every  encouragement  should  be  offered  to  induce 
the  theatre-going  public  to  subscribe  for  the  entire  sea- 
son of  fifteen  plays.  Thus,  the  seats  in  the  orchestra 
might  be  sold  to  subscribers  for  a  dollar  and  a  half  and 
to  non-subscribers  for  two  dollars,  the  seats  in  the 
balcony  might  be  sold  to  subscribers  for  a  dollar  and 
to  non-subscribers  for  a  dollar  and  a  half,  and  the 
seats  in  the  gallery  might  be  sold  to  subscribers  for 
twenty-five  cents  and  to  non-subscribers  for  fifty  cents. 
Season  tickets  for  the  balcony  and  gallery,  admitting 
the  purchaser  to  one  performance  of  each  of  the  fifteen 
plays,  should  be  offered  in  blocks  of  ten  or  more,  at 
even  cheaper  rates,  to  students  of  our  colleges  and 
schools  and  workers  in  our  social  settlements. 

If  I  am  right  in  thinking  that  my  own  students  at 
Columbia  are  not  exceptional  but  representative,  and 
that  there  are  thousands  of  people  in  New  York  who  are 
eager  for  an  opportunity  to  make  acquaintance,  or 
renew  acquaintance,  with  the  acknowledged  master- 
pieces of  our  modern  English  drama,  it  would  not  be 
difficult  to  secure  sustained  support  for  a  season  of 
fifteen  plays  of  the  quality  that  has  been  indicated  by 
the  tentative  list  which  I  have  ventured  to  suggest.  The 


A  SCHEME  FOR  A  STOCK  COMPANY     307 

force  of  habit  is  as  strong  in  theatre-going  as  it  is  in 
every  other  exercise  of  energy ;  and  I  believe  that  these 
people  would  soon  acquire  and  enjoy  the  habit  of  sitting 
in  the  same  seat,  on  the  same  evening,  every  other  week, 
to  see  an  adequate  performance  of  a  play  whose  merit 
is  known  to  be  unquestionable. 

A  considerable  amount  of  the  working  capital  of 
this  hypothetic  institution  would  be  furnished  by  sub- 
scriptions— after  the  plays  had  been  selected,  and  the 
company  had  been  engaged,  and  a  prospectus  [an- 
nouncing both  plays  and  company]  had  been  published. 
But,  of  course,  the  major  portion  of  the  capital  would 
have  to  be  supplied  by  some  commercial  manager  who 
believed  in  the  idea,  or  borrowed  from  certain  public- 
spirited  citizens  of  the  type  concerned  in  the  directorate 
of  the  Metropolitan  Opera  House.  An  initial  invest- 
ment of  not  less  than  one  hundred  thousand  dollars 
would  be  necessary,  in  order  that  the  director  of  the 
undertaking  should  be  able,  at  the  outset,  to  lease  a 
theatre  for  thirty  weeks  and  to  engage  a  company  of 
experienced  actors  for  the  same  period.  I  believe,  how- 
ever, that  the  first  season  would  return  a  profit  of  at 
least  ten  thousand  dollars,  or  ten  per  cent,  on  the 
original  investment ;  and  I  believe,  also,  that  the  per- 
centage of  profit  would  be  increased  in  subsequent 
seasons. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  cheaper  to  lease  outright  a 
semi-abandoned  theatre  for  a  period  of  thirty  weeks 
than  to  secure  admission  to  an  active  theatre,  and  to 
continue  tenure,  for  the  same  period.  In  the  second 
place,  the  rate  of  royalty  that  has  to  be  paid  to  a 


308     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

great  author  for  a  great  play  which  is  more  than  three 
years  old  is  considerably  less  than  the  rate  of  royalty 
that  has  to  be  paid  to  an  inconsiderable  author  for  a 
new  play  that  may  turn  out  to  be  devoid  of  merit. 
By  a  blanket  arrangement  that  could  easily  be  made 
with  the  agents  who  have  been  deputed  to  represent  the 
authors,  the  fifteen  plays  enumerated  in  the  list  which 
I  have  ventured  to  suggest  could  be  produced  at  a 
fixed  royalty  of  two  hundred  dollars  a  week;  and  this 
is  much  less  than  the  royalty  that  has  to  be  paid  for 
any  new  play  that  is  not  an  arrant  failure.  In  the 
third  place,  a  considerable  saving  could  be  made  in  the 
matter  of  adjusting  the  salaries  of  the  actors.  Many 
excellent  performers  who  customarily  demand  two  hun- 
dred dollars  a  week  for  their  services  would  be  willing 
to  join  the  sort  of  company  I  have  in  mind  at  a  salary 
of  one  hundred  dollars  a  week.  Any  actor  who  might 
join  this  hypothetic  company  would  be  assured  of 
thirty  weeks  of  continuous  employment,  instead  of  the 
usual  two  weeks;  he  would  be  assured  of  an  entire  sea- 
son on  Broadway;  and  he  would  also  be  assured  of  a 
certain  opportunity,  within  a  single  season,  for  playing 
fifteen  different  parts,  each  written  by  an  author  of 
acknowledged  eminence,  before  the  eyes  of  every  man- 
ager and  critic  in  New  York.  In  view  of  these  three 
inducements,  which  would  be  absolutely  guaranteed, 
there  is  scarcely  an  experienced  actor  in  the  profession 
who  would  not  willingly  accept  a  considerable  diminu- 
tion in  his  customary  salary.  The  reason  why  many 
actors  demand  a  salary  of  three  or  four  hundred  dol- 
lars a  week  is  merely  that,  after  they  have  rehearsed 


A  SCHEME  FOR  A  STOCK  COMPANY     309 

for  nothing  for  three  weeks,  the  play  may  fail  and  they 
may  be  summarily  discarded  from  employment,  with 
only  two  or  three  weeks'  pay  for  five  or  six  weeks' 
work.  These  same  actors  could  be  signed  up,  at  half- 
salary,  for  a  metropolitan  season  that  was  guaranteed 
to  last  for  thirty  weeks. 

The  expense  for  scenery  in  the  sort  of  theatre  that 
has  been  suggested  would  be  extremely  slight.  In  most 
cases,  the  very  scenery  that  was  employed  in  the  origi- 
nal American  productions  of  the  plays  could  be  rescued 
from  the  storehouse  at  a  merely  nominal  expenditure 
for  transportation.  Furthermore,  the  current  cult  of 
scenery,  which  has  perhaps  been  overemphasized  in 
recent  seasons,  would  be  properly  subordinated  to  a 
recognition  of  the  primary  importance  of  the  contribu- 
tions of  the  author  and  the  actor. 

Two  reasons  have  actuated  the  suggestion  that  a 
change  of  program  should  be  made  not  weekly  but 
fortnightly.  In  the  first  place,  it  has  frequently  been 
indicated  [as  in  the  case  of  Candida]  that  a  great 
play,  whenever  it  may  be  revived,  can  crowd  the  theatre 
in  New  York  for  at  least  sixteen  performances.  In 
the  second  place,  it  is  desirable  to  avoid  any  overwork- 
ing of  the  actors.  An  established  play — in  which  the 
"  business  "  has  already  been  worked  out  and  recorded 
— can  easily  be  rehearsed  and  acted  by  a  company  of 
experienced  performers  within  the  short  time  of  a 
single  week.  If  a  fortnightly  change  of  bill  should  be 
established,  the  actors  would  not  be  required  to  rehearse 
at  all  during  the  first  week  of  the  run  of  any  play :  they 
would  begin  rehearsals  of  the  subsequent  production 


310     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

only  at  the  outset  of  the  second  week  of  the  play  that 
was  being  currently  performed  in  public. 

A  permanent  stock  company  of  no  more  than  a  dozen 
artists  would  suffice  for  the  casting  of  most  of  the  plays 
that  would  be  listed  in  the  program.  Other  actors 
might  be  engaged,  as  guests,  from  time  to  time,  to 
supplement  the  cast  of  any  particular  production. 
Though  the  entire  list  of  fifteen  plays  should  be  prom- 
ised to  subscribers  in  advance,  and  no  renegation  of  this 
program  should  afterward  be  countenanced,  it  would 
not  be  necessary  to  establish  in  advance  the  order  in 
which  the  various  plays  should  be  exhibited.  By  such  a 
reservation,  it  might  be  possible  [for  instance]  to  ar- 
range a  date  for  the  promised  two  weeks'  run  of  Candidc 
at  a  time  when  Arnold  Daly  did  not  happen  to  be  act- 
ing in  any  other  play.  Mr.  Daly  might  then  be  invited, 
as  a  guest  of  the  permanent  stock  company,  to  resume, 
for  that  particular  fortnight,  his  original  role  of 
Marchbanks.  This  principle  has  been  established  for 
many  years  in  the  municipal  theatres  of  Germany ;  and 
it  has  recently  been  exemplified  in  New  York  by  the 
gracious  gesture  of  the  Washington  Square  Players  in 
inviting  Mary  Shaw  to  resume  her  original  role  of 
Mrs.  Alving  in  their  revival  of  Ibsen's  Ghosts. 

In  suggesting  a  rather  random  list  of  fifteen  plays 
for  presentation  in  the  course  of  the  initial  season  of 
this  hypothetical  stock  company,  I  have  not  attempted 
to  arrange  them  in  the  order  of  production.  The  sea- 
son, of  course,  should  open  with  a  pleasant  comedy; 
and,  thereafter,  plays  of  serious  complexion  should 
alternate  with  plays  of  lighter  mood.  But  it  is  only  at 


A  SCHEME  FOR  A  STOCK  COMPANY     311 

one  single  little  point  that  my  own  mind,  in  this  regard, 
has  already  been  made  up.  I  should  like  to  see  the  sea- 
son terminated  by  an  eloquent  performance  of  Alice  Sit- 
By-The-Fire,  the  masterpiece  of  Barrie — so  that  the 
almost  intolerably  lovely  speeches  of  Alice  in  the  final 
act  should  seem  to  serve  as  a  sort  of  valedictory  to  the 
public  after  many  months  of  beautiful  endeavor ;  and  I 
should  like  to  hear  these  speeches  read  once  more — as 
they  were  read  of  old — by  another  great  guest  who 
would  be  welcomed  by  the  company  and  by  the  theatre- 
going  public, — Ethel  Barrymore. 


XXXII 

WHAT    IS    WRONG    WITH    THE    AMERICAN 
DRAMA? 

AT  a  meeting  of  the  Authors  Club  of  New  York  on 
the  evening  of  April  9,  1914,  Mr.  William  Archer 
delivered  an  informal  address,  during  the  course  of 
which  he  asked  an  exceedingly  significant  question  con- 
cerning the  current  American  drama.  He  stated  that 
he  had  visited  this  country  several  times  during  the 
course  of  the  last  fifteen  years,  and  that,  on  each  occa- 
sion, he  had  been  impressed  by  the  vivacity  of 
invention,  the  alertness  of  observation,  and  the  zest  of 
entertainment  in  our  popular  American  plays ;  but  that, 
whenever  he  had  returned  to  New  York  after  an  ab- 
sence of  only  two  or  three  years,  he  had  discovered  with 
surprise  that  nearly  all  the  current  American  plays  had 
been  written  by  new  writers,  and  that  the  playwrights 
whose  work  he  had  admired  only  a  short  time  before 
had  apparently  been  relegated  to  oblivion.  He  re- 
garded our  continual  discovery  of  new  writers  as  an 
evidence  of  an  extraordinary  fertility  in  native  talent 
for  the  theatre ;  but  he  considered  our  apparent  failure 
to  develop  the  writers  whom  we  did  discover  as  an  evi- 
dence of  a  scarcely  explicable  prodigality.  "  Why  is 
it,"  he  inquired,  "  that  each  new  generation  of  American 

312 


WHAT  IS  WRONG  WITH  OUR  DRAMA?     313 

playwrights  seems  to  endure  only  two  or  three  seasons? 
Why  is  it  that  so  many  men  of  talent,  who  have  written 
one  or  two  promising  plays,  are  supplanted  by  other 
men  of  talent  before  they  have  had  time  to  fulfil  their 
promise?  What  becomes  of  all  your  playwrights?  Why 
do  you  throw  them  away,  instead  of  helping  them  to 
develop  their  ability  ?  " 

This  inquiry  is  extremely  difficult  to  answer.  In  the 
first  place,  it  may  be  stated  that  our  theatre-going 
public  seems  to  set  a  higher  value  on  invention  than  on 
imagination.  This  fact  was  clearly  felt  by  the  late 
Clyde  Fitch;  and  to  satisfy  the  public  craving  for  in- 
vention, he  nearly  always  devoted  his  initial  acts  to 
exploiting  some  novel  device  of  theatrical  dexterity. 
His  audience  desired  him  to  be  clever;  and,  responsive 
to  the  sense  of  this  demand,  he  tossed  out  a  sop  of 
cleverness  before  proceeding  to  the  imaginative  business 
of  his  play.  But  the  history  of  nearly  all  considerable 
artists  teaches  us  that  they  begin  with  invention  and 
then  slowly  ripen  to  imagination, — they  commence  with 
cleverness  and  ultimately  rise  to  simplicity  and  serenity. 
It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  the  most  vivid 
invention,  the  most  captivating  cleverness,  should  be 
displayed  in  the  first  or  second  plays  of  writers  of 
ingenious  talent.  A  new  idea  is  most  likely  to  be 
advanced  by  a  new  man.  This  is  probably  the  reason 
why  the  American  public,  with  its  avidity  for  clever 
invention,  prefers  the  ingenuity  of  new  authors  to  the 
matured  imagination  of  writers  who  have  risen  above 
the  initial  exercise  of  cleverness. 

In  the  second  place,  it  should  be  stated  that  the 


314     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

American  public  goes  to  the  theatre  merely  to  be 
entertained,  and  that  it  finds  more  entertainment  in  a 
shifting  of  the  point  of  view  toward  life  than  in  a 
deepening  of  the  vision  of  life  from  an  established 
point  of  view.  Thus  far,  no  incentive  has  been  offered 
to  our  playwrights  to  grow  up.  Our  public  does  not 
ask  that  a  man  shall  meditate  upon  our  life  until  he  is 
able  to  say  something  about  it  that  is  valuable ;  it  asks 
merely  that  he  shall  point  an  unexpected  finger  at  some 
aspect  of  our  life  that  has  not  previously  been  exploited 
on  the  stage.  In  setting  this  premium  on  sheer  origi- 
nality, it  votes  in  favor  of  new  writers  at  the  expense  01 
older  and  wiser  men,  and  tosses  aside  Augustus  Thomas, 
who  is  trying  to  expound  a  philosophy  of  life,  in  favor 
of  Bayard  Veiller,  who  gives  it  news. 

Only  twenty  years  ago,  it  was  commonly  complained 
that  a  new  playwright  could  not  get  a  hearing  in  Amer- 
ica. Nowadays  any  playwright  can  get  a  hearing, 
providing  only  that  he  come  forward  with  something 
that  is  new.  This  premium  that  is  set  on  novelty  is 
perhaps  the  greatest  cause  that  inhibits  the  develop- 
ment of  serious  drama  in  America.  A  mature  play- 
wright, who  has  grown  to  take  a  greater  interest  in 
life  than  in  the  theatre,  is  seldom  likely  to  deal  with 
novel  subjects  or  to  present  them  in  a  novel  way.  Great 
themes  are  never  new ;  and  an  artist  with  something  to 
say  about  life  is  rarely  willing  to  overlay  his  mes- 
sage with  the  distractions  of  inventive  ingenuity.  As  a 
result  of  the  public  demand  for  cleverness,  we  are  now 
confronted  with  a  situation  which  makes  it  easy  for 
new  playwrights  to  displav  their  inventions,  but  makes 


WHAT  IS  WRONG  WITH  OUR  DRAMA?     315 

it  comparatively  difficult  for  the  same  writers  a  few 
years  later  to  secure  a  favorable  hearing  for  the  more 
imaginative  works  of  their  maturity. 

Until  this  situation  is  changed,  we  shall  never  suc- 
ceed in  developing  a  national  drama  in  America.  Until 
we  devise  some  system  for  distinguishing  between  new 
playwrights  who  are  merely  clever  and  new  playwrights 
who  are  likely  to  progress  from  invention  to  imagina- 
tion, until  we  devise  some  method  for  nurturing  the 
comparatively  few  writers  who  seem  inherently  capable 
of  an  ultimate  achievement  of  dramatic  art,  until  we 
learn  to  throw  away  the  merely  entertaining  craftsmen 
as  soon  as  they  have  entertained  us  but  never  to  throw 
away  an  author  of  real  promise,  and  until  we  learn 
to  laud  imagination  more  than  we  applaud  invention 
and  to  set  a  premium  upon  the  man  who  secures  his 
incentive  from  life  itself  instead  of  from  the  theatre, 
we  shall  not  be  rewarded  with  a  national  drama  in 
America.  The  familiar  statement  that  the  theatre- 
going  public  gets  what  it  deserves  is  true,  at  least,  to 
this  extent : — that  no  public  ever  gets  a  national  drama 
until  it  deserves  it. 

As  Mr.  Archer  stated,  we  have  more  than  enough 
playwrights  of  sufficient  talent  to  achieve  a  national 
dramatic  literature,  if  only  the  conditions  of  our 
theatre  were  such  as  to  foster  the  development  of  their 
ability  instead  of  to  cut  it  off  at  the  very  outset.  The 
reason  why  we  produce  so  few  American  plays  of  any 
genuine  importance  is  not  that  we  lack  the  men  to 
write  them,  but  that  as  yet  we  lack  the  conditions  to 
demand  them.  Great  dramatists  are  made,  not  born. 


316     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

Dramatic  talent  is  born ;  but  dramatic  genius  is  de- 
veloped only  when  dramatic  talent  is  fostered  by  in- 
spiriting theatrical  conditions.  No  plant  can  come  to 
flower  unless  it  can  take  root  in  fertile  soil;  and  the 
reason  why  so  many  of  our  playwrights  are  never  heard 
from  after  their  first  two  or  three  plays  is  that  they  are 
sown  as  seed  by  the  wayside  and  fall  on  rocky  ground. 

The  responsibility  for  the  present  dearth  of  Amer- 
ican dramatic  art  must  be  divided  between  the  public, 
the  managers,  the  critics,  and  the  playwrights  them- 
selves; and  we  may  most  clearly  analyze  the  situation 
by  approaching  it  successively  from  the  points  of  view 
of  these  four  factors. 

First  of  all,  it  must  be  frankly  stated  that  the  public 
of  America,  considered  as  a  whole,  is  not  at  all  inter- 
ested in  the  drama.  It  is  enormously  interested  in 
the  theatre;  but  that  is  another  matter  altogether. 
Throughout  his  recent  book  on  The  Foundations  of  a 
National  Drama,  Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones  has  insisted 
on  the  prime  importance  of  dispelling  the  confusion 
between  the  drama  and  the  theatre  which  persists  in 
the  popular  mind.  The  drama  is  an  art  of  authorship ; 
and  the  theatre  entertains  the  public  by  the  exhibition 
of  many  other  matters  than  the  art  of  authorship. 
Mr.  Jones  has  pointed  out  that  the  theatre  has  often 
flourished  in  periods  when  the  drama  was  dead.  Thus, 
in  England  in  the  early  nineteenth  century,  there  was 
no  British  drama  of  any  consequence,  but  the  British 
theatre  prospered  by  exhibiting  the  acting  of  such  great 
performers  as  Mrs.  Siddons  and  the  Kembles,  Kean 
and  Macready.  Sir  Henry  Irving,  who  did  great  things 


WHAT  IS  WRONG  WITH  OUR  DRAMA?     317 

for  the  British  theatre,  did  absolutely  nothing  for  the 
British  drama,  since  he  never  produced  a  play  by  a 
contemporary  author  of  importance.  Likewise,  Edwin 
Booth  and  Richard  Mansfield,  who  led  the  American 
theatre  for  two  successive  generations,  accomplished 
nothing  whatsoever  for  the  American  drama. 

The  drama,  to  repeat,  is  an  art  of  authorship;  and 
the  American  public  of  to-day,  considered  as  a  whole, 
cares  nothing  for  dramatic  authorship.  It  goes  to  the 
theatre  merely  to  be  entertained ;  and  it  does  not  care 
in  the  least  whether  it  is  entertained  by  musical  comedy, 
vaudeville,  moving-pictures,  or  what  are  quaintly  called 
legitimate  plays.  It  groups  all  these  heterogeneous 
exhibitions  together,  and  decides  that  certain  offerings 
— without  regard  to  class — are  "  good  shows  "  and 
certain  others  are  not. 

Since  the  American  public  is  not  interested  in  dra- 
matic authorship,  and  cares  only  for  what  it  is  willing 
to  consider  a  "  good  show,"  it  would  scarcely  be  fair 
to  blame  our  theatrical  managers  for  devoting  most  of 
their  attention  to  non-dramatic  forms  of  entertainment, 
such  as  musical  comedies,  vaudeville,  and  moving- 
pictures,  nor  even  for  insisting  that  the  legitimate  plays 
they  do  produce  shall  be  so  planned  as  to  compete  com- 
mercially with  these  other  types  of  "  what  the  public 
wants."  Thus  we  perceive  that  the  growth  of  the 
American  drama  is  actually  impeded  by  the  popularity 
of  the  American  theatre.  The  fact  that  a  million 
Americans  go  to  the  theatre  every  night  is  of  no  assist- 
ance to  our  playwrights ;  it  is,  instead,  a  hindrance  to 
them,  since,  in  spending  their  time  and  money  for  forms 


318     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

of  entertainment  that  are  mainly  non-dramatic,  these 
million  people  are  preventing  themselves  from  develop- 
ing any  interest  in  the  drama. 

The  reason  why  Mr.  George  M.  Cohan  is  the  most 
popular  playwright  in  America  to-day  is  that  he  has 
succeeded  in  inventing  a  type  of  legitimate  comedy  that 
can  hold  its  own  against  the  drastic  competition  of 
musical  comedy  and  vaudeville  and  moving-pictures.' 
His  plays  unite  the  rapid,  dashing  plot  of  kinetoscopic 
exhibitions  with  the  low-comedy  characterization  of 
vaudeville  turns  and  the  general  air  of  inconsequential 
sprightliness  that  pervades  the  best  musical  comedies ; 
and  Get-Rich-Quick  Wallingford  or  Seven  Keys  to 
Baldpate  are  denominated  "  good  shows  "  by  the  same 
people  who  always  go  to  see  Gaby  Deslys  and  never  go 
to  hear  John  Galsworthy.  Mr.  Cohan  is  an  artist  of 
the  theatre ;  and  he  must  be  very  highly  praised  for  his 
dexterity  in  managing  to  meet  the  public  on  its  own 
ground  with  plays  that,  none  the  less,  may  be  admired 
by  people  of  intelligence  and  culture.  But  it  seems 
unfortunate  that  the  Cohan  formula  should  be  accepted 
at  the  present  time  as  the  most  reliable  talisman  to 
success  in  the  American  theatre. 

Is  there  a  single  manager  in  America  who  is  willing 
to  forego  the  emoluments  that  result  from  wholesale 
dealing  in  popular  theatric  entertainments,  in  order 
to  foster  the  development  of  an  American  dramatic 
literature?  .  .  .  Have  we  a  single  manager  who  is  will- 
ing to  work  for  a  national  achievement,  as  Lady 
Gregory  has  worked  in  Dublin,  as  Miss  Horniman  has 
worked  in  Manchester,  as  Mr.  Granville  Barker  has 


WHAT  IS  WRONG  WITH  OUR  DRAMA?     319 

worked  in  London?  Without  the  managerial  efforts  of 
Lady  Gregory  and  Mr.  Yeats,  the  world  would  never 
have  heard  of  John  M.  Synge;  without  the  managerial 
efforts  of  Miss  Horniman,  the  world  would  never  have 
heard  of  Stanley  Houghton ;  and  without  the  man- 
agerial efforts  of  Mr.  Granville  Barker,  the  world  would 
never  have  heard  of  Bernard  Shaw.  It  is,  perhaps, 
enough  to  ask  this  question.  It  would  be,  of  course, 
embarrassing  to  answer  it. 

Our  managers,  following  our  public,  seem  to  care 
only  for  the  theatre  and  not  at  all  for  the  drama.  Per- 
haps, for  the  sake  of  clearness,  it  may  be  desirable,  at 
the  present  point  of  our  discussion,  to  define  what  is 
meant  by  "  the  drama."  We  can  find  no  better  defini- 
tion than  one  which  has  been  offered  by  Mr.  Henry 
Arthur  Jones.  According  to  this  good  and  faithful 
servant  of  all  that  is  noblest  in  the  contemporary 
theatre,  the  purpose  of  the  drama  is  (1)  to  represent 
life  and  (2)  to  interpret  life,  in  terms  of  the  theatre. 
Mr.  Jones  admits  that  only  a  few  great  dramatists 
have  succeeded  in  interpreting  life  in  terms  of  the 
theatre;  but  he  insists  that  no  writer  should  be  digni- 
fied with  the  name  of  dramatist  unless  he  has  at  least 
succeeded  in  representing  life  in  terms  of  the  theatre. 
According  to  this  formula  of  criticism,  we  should,  in 
estimating  any  drama,  inquire  (1)  whether  the  author 
has  set  forth  a  representation  of  life,  and  (2)  whether 
he  has  also  revealed  an  interpretation  of  life.  A  play 
that  passes  the  first  test  is  a  drama;  a  play  that  also 
passes  the  second  test  is  a  great  drama ;  but  a  play  that 
does  not  pass  either  test  is  not  a  work  of  dramatic  art 


320     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

and  can  be  considered  only  as  a  passing  entertainment. 
How  often  are  these  simple  tests  applied  by  the  men 
who  are  employed  by  our  newspapers  and  magazines 
to  inform  the  public  of  what  is  going  on  in  the  theatres 
of  America?  .  .  .  This  question  brings  us  face  to  face 
with  one  of  the  most  important  causes  of  the  dearth 
of  public  appreciation  of  the  drama  in  this  country. 
Our  so-called  organs  of  opinion,  instead  of  endeavoring 
to  lead  the  public,  are  content  to  follow  it ;  and,  in- 
stead of  establishing  departments  of  dramatic  criticism, 
they  are  content  to  conduct  departments  devoted  merely 
to  gossip  of  the  theatre.  With  less  than  a  dozen  excep- 
tions, the  newspapers  and  even  the  magazines  of  this 
country  treat  the  theatre  as  "  news  "  and  refuse  to 
recognize  the  drama  as  an  art.  When  the  late  Stanley 
Houghton  came  forward  with  Hindle  Wakes,  a  work  of 
dramatic  art  in  which  he  told  the  utter  truth  about  an 
important  phase  of  life  which  for  centuries  had  always 
been  lied  about  in  the  theatre,  did  any  of  our  news- 
papers trumpet  this  rare  and  wonderful  achievement  in 
its  headlines?  .  .  .  Did  any  of  our  editors  deem  it 
important  to  declare  that  a  new  dramatist  had  emerged 
in  Manchester  who  was  able  to  set  forth  both  a  truth- 
ful representation  of  life  and  a  piercing  interpretation 
of  it  ?  .  .  .  No,  indeed ;  our  newspaper  reviewers  merely 
stated,  as  a  piece  of  news,  that  Hindle  Wakes,  though 
meritorious,  seemed  scarcely  likely  to  enjoy  a  long  run 
in  New  York.  In  other  words,  it  wasn't  a  "  good 
show";  and  the  public,  prejudiced  against  it  by  the 
faint  praise  of  the  papers,  permitted  the  piece  to  be 
withdrawn  without  a  hearing. 


WHAT  IS  WRONG  WITH  OUR  DRAMA?    321 

It  seems  scarcely  an  exaggeration  to  state  that  there 
is  no  dramatic  criticism  in  America, — that  there  is  no 
concerted  effort  on  the  part  of  those  who  edit  the 
theatrical  pages  of  our  publications  to  assist  the  public 
to  distinguish  between  the  drama  and  the  theatre  and 
to  cultivate  an  appreciation  of  the  drama  which  shall 
be  clearly  set  apart  from  the  enjoyment  of  non- 
dramatic  types  of  entertainment.  Our  so-called  "  dra- 
matic critics  "  [with  less  than  a  dozen  exceptions  in  the 
whole  United  States]  are  not  critics  but  reporters. 
They  give  greater  publicity  to  the  fact  that  Miss  Billie 
Burke  looks  well  in  pink  pajamas  than  to  the  fact  that 
Miss  Eleanor  Gates  has  written  a  work  of  art  in  The 
Poor  Little  Rich  Girl.  The  fancy  and  the  wisdom  of 
Miss  Gates  are  considered  less  important  as  a  piece  of 
"news"  than  the  pajamas  of  Miss  Burke;  and,  as  a 
result  of  this  sort  of  propaganda,  our  potential  drama- 
tists are  required  to  compete  not  only  against  musical 
comedy  and  moving-pictures  but  also  against  the  lay 
figures  in  a  haberdasher's  window. 

It  will  be  seen,  therefore,  that  the  comparatively  few 
playwrights  in  America  who  are  honestly  ambitious  ( 1 ) 
to  represent  life  truly,  in  order  (2)  to  interpret  life 
nobly,  are  condemned  to  struggle  single-handed  against 
the  embattled  negligence  of  the  public  and  the  managers 
and  the  theatrical  reviewers.  The  public  does  not  want 
to  be  told  the  truth ;  it  wants  to  be  amused.  The  man- 
agers do  not  want  dramatic  art ;  they  want  "  what  the 
public  wants."  The  theatrical  reviewers  are  not  inter- 
ested in  the  drama;  they  judge  the  value  of  a  play  in 
proportion  to  tfag  number  of  nights  it  seems  destined 


322     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

to  run  in  the  metropolis,  and  consequently  consider 
Peg  o'  My  Heart  a  more  important  work  than  The 
Pigeon.  Need  we  wonder  any  longer  why  so  many  of 
our  playwrights  succumb  to  this  embattled  negligence 
and  never  fulfil  the  promise  of  their  earliest  endeavors? 

But  our  playwrights  themselves  cannot  be  entirely 
absolved  from  blame  for  the  present  dearth  of  dramatic 
art  in  America.  Too  many  of  them,  even  from  the  very 
outset,  write  with  an  eye  to  the  theatre  instead  of  with 
an  eye  to  life.  They  derive  their  inspiration  from  the 
wrong  side  of  the  footlights.  Instead  of  trying  to 
express  what  they  think  that  life  is  like,  they  are  con- 
tented to  express  what  they  think  a  play  is  like.  In- 
stead of  following  Hamlet's  advice  and  imitating  nature, 
they  imitate  each  other.  If  one  of  them  writes  a  play 
about  the  underworld  that  makes  money  in  the  theatre, 
a  dozen  others  hasten  to  write  plays  about  the  under- 
world,— not  because  they  are  really  interested  in  the 
underworld  or  have  anything  to  say  about  it,  but  be- 
cause they  are  merely  interested  in  making  money  in 
the  theatre.  This  enervating  circle  revolves  until  it  has 
exhausted  its  transient  popularity;  and,  the  next  sea- 
son, the  same  playwrights  are  chasing  each  other 
around  another  circle.  Thus,  instead  of  moving  on 
and  getting  anywhere,  our  playwrights  merely  exhaust 
themselves  in  running  Marathons  around  a  track  which 
returns  continually  to  the  starting-point. 

Another  point  to  be  considered  is  that  the  American 
drama  at  the  present  time  seems  to  be  hovering  in  a 
state  of  transition  between  that  initial  period  during 
which  it  was  made  up  of  mere  theatrical  machinery 


WHAT  IS  WRONG  WITH  OUR  DRAMA?     323 

and  discussed  no  topics  of  serious  importance  to  the 
public,  and  that  still  future  period  during  which  it  will 
ascend  to  the  revelation  of  permanent  realities  of  life. 
Meanwhile,  it  is  devoted  mainly  to  an  exhibition  of  the 
events  of  the  hour  and  a  discussion  of  the  topics  of  the 
day. 

Our  most  successful  playwrights,  for  the  moment,  are 
those  who  hold  their  noses  close  to  their  newspapers. 
They  gather  what  is  being  talked  about  in  the  daily 
press  and  set  it  forth  upon  the  stage  before  a  public 
that  naturally  wants  to  see  what  it  has  been  reading 
of  for  many  months.  As  one  topic  after  another  is 
promoted  to  the  first  pages  of  our  journals,  it  also 
comes  forward  in  our  theatres  and  assumes  the  center 
of  the  stage.  Several  seasons  ago,  the  favorite  sub- 
ject for  discussion  in  our  drama  was  the  iniquity  of  big 
business ;  later  on,  it  was  the  methods  used  by  malefac- 
tors to  evade  our  laws ;  and  still  later,  it  was,  for  a 
time,  the  white  slave  traffic.  An  interest  in  these  public 
evils  having  previously  been  worked  up  in  the  press, 
our  playwrights  took  advantage  of  the  occasion  to  show 
the  public  what  the  public  had  been  reading  about. 

There  is  no  surer  avenue  than  this  to  immediate  suc- 
cess within  the  theatre ;  and  yet  it  is  scarcely  necessary 
for  the  critic  to  point  out  that  in  thus  allying  their 
work  with  journalism  our  playwrights  are  withholding 
it  from  literature.  One  of  the  most  serious  handicaps 
to  the  development  of  a  national  drama  that  shall  have 
some  value  as  literature  is  the  craze  of  our  theatre  for 
keeping,  as  the  phrase  is,  up  to  date.  In  this  endeavor 
to  make  our  work,  at  all  costs,  timely,  we  label  our 


324      PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

plays  as  belonging  to  the  vintage  of  a  particular  sea- 
son; whereas  in  the  best  plays  of  our  British  con- 
temporaries— like  Mid-Channel,  for  example,  or  Don, 
or  What  Every  Woman  Knows — there  is  nothing  to  in- 
dicate precisely  the  year  when  they  were  written.  But 
Time  is  sure  to  take  revenge  on  all  things  timely;  and 
these  British  plays  will  still  seem  new  a  dozen  years 
from  now,  whereas  our  dated  efforts  will  be  out  of 
date,  like  the  journals  of  yesteryear,  fit  only  to  make 
soft  padding  under  carpets. 

In  the  interesting  preface  to  his  published  play, 
entitled  The  Divine  Gift,  Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones  re- 
marks, "  No  play  that  has  lived  has  set  out  to  tackle 
the  latest  newspaper  and  political  problems  in  the  spirit 
and  by  the  methods  of  the  social  reformer.  If  I  may 
whisper  a  caution  to  young  and  aspiring  playwrights, 
I  would  say,  '  Never  choose  for  your  theme  a  burning 
question  of  the  hour,  unless  you  wish  merely  for  a  suc- 
cess that  will  burn  out  in  an  hour.  If  you  wish  your 
plays  to  live,  choose  permanent  themes  and  universal 
types  of  characters.' ' 

These  words  of  the  sagacious  mentor  of  the  modern 
British  drama  sum  up  one  of  the  chief  drawbacks  of  our 
American  drama  at  the  present  time.  It  deals  with 
types  of  character  that  are  local  instead  of  being  uni- 
versal, and  discusses  themes  that,  instead  of  being  per- 
manent, are  merely  temporary.  Our  playwrights  think 
too  little  of  the  ultimate  aim  of  art  and  too  much  of  the 
immediate  aim  of  social  reform.  Reform  is  the  only 
enterprise  that  annihilates  its  own  existence  by  success ; 
and,  when  once  a  current  topic  has  been  settled,  there 


WHAT  IS  WRONG  WITH  OUR  DRAMA?     325 

can  arise  no  reason  for  reopening  discussion  of  the 
point.  The  more  successful  our  journalistic  plays  may 
be,  the  more  quickly  must  they  go  to  a  grave  of  their 
own  digging.  But  a  drama  that  expounds  the  great 
recurrent  problems  of  humanity  may  remain  as  immor- 
tal as  the  human  race  itself. 

On  the  other  hand,  however,  in  these  years  while  we 
are  waiting  for  the  great  American  drama  that  is  to 
be,  it  is  surely  better  that  our  playwrights  should 
attack  the  social  problems  of  the  hour  than  that  they 
should  discuss  no  problems  whatsoever.  Our  theatre 
has  advanced  far  from  that  initial  period  when  it  merely 
discoursed  sweet  nothings  to  awaken  easy  tears.  The 
newspaper  is  nearer  to  life  than  the  picture  story- 
book ;  and  it  is  but  another  step  from  the  newspaper  to 
the  novel.  If  we  are  merely  lighting  candles  that  will 
burn  out  in  an  hour,  we  are  at  least  casting  a  momen- 
tary light  upon  some  problems  that,  for  the  moment, 
are  in  need  of  illumination ;  and,  in  even  discussing  so 
sordid  a  topic  as  the  white  slave  traffic  on  the  stage, 
we  have  moved  nearer  to  the  mood  of  literature  than 
our  Victorian  predecessors  stood  when  they  exhibited 
a  matinee-hero  plucking  the  petals  of  a  daisy  and  mur- 
muring, "  She  loves  me,"  and  "  She  loves  me  not." 
Though  some  of  us  may  not  particularly  like  what  our 
playwrights  are  at  present  discussing  in  the  theatre,  it 
is  at  least  a  reassuring  sign  that  they  are  discussing 
something. 

What,  then — to  sum  up  the  entire  situation — must 
we  still  accomplish  in  America,  before  we  shall  deserve 
to  develop  a  national  drama  to  which  we  shall  be  able 


326     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

[in  the  florid  language  of  political  platforms]  to 
"point  with  pride"?  First  of  all,  we  must  educate  a 
considerable  section  of  our  public  to  distinguish  be- 
tween the  theatre  and  the  drama,  and  to  value  the  art 
of  the  drama  as  something  distinct  from,  and  better 
than,  such  types  of  ephemeral  entertainment  as  musical 
comedy  and  vaudeville  and  moving-pictures.  Having 
educated  a  special  public  to  patronize  dramatic  art,  we 
must  organize  this  public  and  be  able  to  deliver  it  to  the 
support  of  every  play  in  which  life  is  represented  truly 
in  the  endeavor  to  interpret  life  nobly.  These  two 
tasks — the  task  of  educating  the  public  to  recognize 
dramatic  art,  and  the  task  of  organizing  the  public  to 
support  it — have  already  been  undertaken  by  the 
Drama  League  of  America ;  and  this  society  has  thus 
far  done  its  work  so  well  that  it  no  longer  seems  quixotic 
to  expect  that,  within  the  next  ten  years,  a  strong  and 
potent  interest  in  the  drama  (as  distinguished  from  the 
theatre)  will  be  developed  in  America. 

In  the  second  place,  we  must  discover  and  encourage 
and  support  a  few  managers  who  will  be  willing  to  make 
a  living  wage  by  catering  to  the  growing  interest  in 
the  dramatic  art,  instead  of  gambling  to  win  or  lose 
large  fortunes  by  catering  to  the  prevailing  taste  for 
entertainment  of  a  type  that  has  no  real  relation  to  the 
drama. 

In  the  third  place,  we  must  organize  a  vigorous  de- 
mand for  dramatic  criticism  in  America.  While  per- 
mitting our  newspapers  and  our  magazines  to  report 
non-dramatic  entertainments  as  they  report  baseball 
games,  while  allowing  our  editors  to  extract  the  fullest 


WHAT  IS  WRONG  WITH  OUR  DRAMA?     327 

"  news  value "  from  the  pinkness  of  Miss  Burke's 
pajamas,  we  must  also  demand  that  contributions  to  the 
great  art  of  the  drama  shall  be  explained  and  inter- 
preted by  experts  in  the  noble  art  of  dramatic  criticism. 
In  other  words,  we  must  insist  that  our  so-called  organs 
of  opinion  shall  consider  the  art  of  the  drama  as  seri- 
ously as  they  now  consider  the  art  of  painting  and  the 
art  of  music.  We  do  not  permit  our  newspapers  to 
treat  Rembrandt  or  Wagner  as  subjects  for  feeble 
merriment;  and  we  must  likewise  cease  to  allow  them 
to  treat  Ibsen  as  a  joke. 

In  the  fourth  place,  we  must  encourage  our  play- 
wrights to  endeavor  to  represent  life  truly  and  to  inter- 
pret life  nobly,  by  rewarding  them  with  fame  and  money 
whenever  they  succeed  in  either  of  these  difficult  en- 
deavors. We  must  convince  them  that  the  playing  of 
the  game  itself  is  more  than  worth  the  burning  of  the 
candle  at  both  ends.  The  present  writer  now  recalls  a 
conversation  with  the  late  Clyde  Fitch,  which  occurred 
about  ten  years  ago,  in  which  Mr.  Fitch  complained 
because  The  Truth,  which  he  regarded  as  his  best  play, 
had  failed  in  New  York,  at  the  same  time  when  Sapho, 
which  he  regarded  as  a  work  of  no  importance,  was 
still  playing  to  twelve  thousand  dollars  a  week  in  one- 
night  stands  in  Texas.  "  Is  there  anybody  in  this 
country,"  he  inquired,  "  who  cares  to  have  us  try  to 
do  our  best?"  .  .  .  It  is  an  encouraging  sign  that, 
whereas  Sapho  has  now  been  tossed  aside,  The  Truth 
has  recently  been  revived  in  New  York  by  Mr.  Win- 
throp  Ames, — one  of  the  very  few  American  managers 
who  care  about  the  drama  as  an  art.  This  revival 


328     PROBLEMS  OF  THE  PLAYWRIGHT 

demonstrated  that  The  Truth  was  worthy  of  its  title, 
and  that  the  man  who  wrote  it  was  capable  of  repre- 
senting and  interpreting  the  life  he  saw  about  him  in 
America.  But  Clyde  Fitch  was  not  destined  to  live 
until  this  sincere  and  able  work  was  accorded,  at  a 
belated  date,  the  recognition  which  it  deserved  when  it 
was  first  disclosed.  At  present  we  can  merely  wonder 
if  our  public  and  our  managers  and  our  reviewers 
would  so  negligently  have  allowed  themselves  to  throw 
away  this  dramatist,  if  they  had  known,  at  the  moment 
when  he  wrote  The  Truth,  that  he  was  doomed  to  die 
at  the  early  age  of  forty-four. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Abbey  Theatre  Players,  4,  175, 

296. 

Admiral  Guinea,  161,  162,  163. 
jEschylus,  ix,  195,  214,  234. 
Aglavaine    and    Selysette,    198, 

200. 

Aiglon,  L' ,  55,  56. 
Albert,  King  of  the  Belgians,  205. 
Alice  8it-By-The-Fire,U9,  120, 

151,   278,   300,   305,   310. 
Amateur    Comedy    Club,    182, 

183. 
Ames,  Winthrop,  227,  231,  264, 

291,  303,  304,  327. 
Androcles    and    the    Lion,   216, 

231. 

Angelico,  Fra,  95. 
Anglin,  Margaret,  232,  284. 
Anspacher,  Louis  Kaufman,  49, 

51 ;  The  Vnchastened  Woman, 

49. 
A      Quoi    Revent     leg     Jeunes 

Filles,  98. 
Archer,  William,  v,  1,  2,  3,  4, 

5,  7,  27,  32,  33,  35,  56,  161, 

310,   315;    Play-Making,  2. 
Aristotle,  ix,  x,  203. 
Arnold,  Matthew,  124,  265. 
Arts  and  Crafts  Theatre,  The, 

189,  190. 

Aspects  of  Modern  Drama,  118. 
As    You  Like   It,  4,   43. 
Attack,  The,  16,  17,  18. 

Bacchce,  The,  207. 
Bacon,  Sir  Francis,  212. 
Baker,  Elizabeth,  x. 
Baker,  George  Pierce,  101.  | 
Bakst,  L6on,  231. 
Balfour,  Graham,  166. 
Banville,  Theodore  de,  99. 
Barker,  Harley  Granville,  x,  42, 
98,   117,   121,    151,    153,    172, 


209,  210,  216,  217,  218,  227, 
231,  232,  238,  239,  303,  318, 
319;  Prunella,  98,  99;  The 
Madras  House,  x,  4,  5,  42, 
121;  The  Morris  Dance,  172; 
The  Voysey  Inheritance,  151. 

Barrie,  Sir  James  Matthew,  44, 
110,  117,  118,  119,  122,  123, 
124,  125,  126,  129,  151,  152, 
153,  155,  275,  278,  305,  310; 
A  Kiss  for  Cinderella,  125, 
126,  129,  137,  305;  Alice  Sit- 
By-The-Fire,  119,  120,  151, 
278,  300,  310;  Peter  Pan,  118, 
122;  The  Admirable  Crich- 
ton,  161,  162,  163,  302,  305; 
The  Legend  of  Leonora,  44; 
What  Every  Woman  Knows, 
124,  134. 

Bartholomew  Fair,  213. 

Barrymore,  Ethel,  310. 

Beau  Austin,  161,  162. 

Beethoven,  Ludwig  van,  262. 

Belasco,  David,  82,  85,  218,  219, 
220,  227,  228;  The  Darling  of 
the  Gods,  218;  The  Return  of 
Peter  Grimm,  218. 

Bellini,  Giovanni,  93,  97. 

Bennett,  Arnold,  28;  The  Great 
Adventure,  1,  4,  5. 

Berkeley,  Bishop,  294. 

Bernhardt,  Sarah,  56,  88. 

Bernstein,  Henry,  15,  16,  17,  18, 
19,  44;  The  Attack,  16,  17, 
18;  The  Secret,  16,  17,  19; 
Israel,  44. 

Bertha,  the  Sewing-Machine 
Girl,  273. 

Besier,  Rudolf,  151,  153,  305; 
Don,  151,  305,  324. 

Bethmann-Hollweg,  Chancellor, 
von,  205. 

Big  Drum,  The,  44. 


331 


362 


INDEX 


"  Birmingham,   George    A.,"    6, 

8;  General  John  Regan,  6. 
Bjorkman,     Edwin,     175,     177, 

195. 

Blue  Bird,  The,  x,  197. 
Bonstelle,  Jessie,  285. 
Book  of  Wonder,  The,  175. 
Boomerang,    The,    81,    82,    85, 

227,  228. 

Booth,  Edwin,  317. 
Boucicault,   Dion,   66;   London 

Assurance,  66. 
Bourget,  Paul,  292. 
Botticelli,  Sandro,  198. 
Boyd,  Mrs.  Emma  Garrett,  178, 

186. 
Brieux,    viii,   xi,   49,   275,   292; 

The  Red  Robe,  x,  49. 
Broadhurst,  George,  100,  292. 
Broadway  Jones,  72,  299. 
Brown,  Alice,  298;  Children  of 

Earth,  298. 
Browne,  Maurice,  284. 
Browne,  Sir  Thomas,  134,  271. 
Browning,  Robert,  23,  88,  109, 

110,    111,   139. 

Brunetiere,  Ferdinand,  1,  3,  5. 
Brunner,  Arnold  W.,  202. 
Bunty  Pulls  the  Strings,  296. 
Burke,  Billie,  321,  327. 
Byron,    George    Gordon    Noel, 

Lord,  19,  95;  Don  Juan,  95. 

i 

Cable,  George  Washington,  295. 
Calderon,  Don  Pedro  C.,  de  la 

Barca,  viii,  ix,  234. 
Calvert,  Louis,  244,  245. 
Candida,  111,  113,  114,  119,  151, 

300,  305,  309,  310. 
Can  Grande  della  Scala,  195. 
Cask  of  Amontillado,  The,  193. 
Catullus,  96. 
Cellini,  Benvenuto,  96. 
Chandler,  Frank  Wadleigh,  118, 

119,  125;  Aspects  of  Modern 

Drama,  118. 

Change,   60,   61,   62,   63,   296. 
Changing  Drama,  The,  118. 
Chantecler,  x. 
Chaucer,  Geoffrey,  102. 


Cheating  Cheaters,  33,  270. 

Cherry  Orchard,  The,  x. 

Chesterton,  Gilbert  Keith,  102, 
103,  104,  105,  106;  Magic, 
102,  103,  105. 

Children  of  Earth,  298. 

Chinatown  Charlie,  273. 

Cibber,  Colley,  65. 

Clemens,  Samuel  Langhorne,  see 
"  Mark  Twain." 

Cohan,  George  Michael,  31,  48, 
67,  70,  71,  72,  73,  74,  75,  76, 
101,  147,  290,  292,  299,  318; 
Broadway  Jones,  72,  299; 
Get-Rich-Quick  Wallingford, 
72,  299,  318;  Hit-the-Trail 
Holliday,  72,  299;  Seven 
Keys  to  Baldpate,  31,  75,  318. 

Colvin,  Sir  Sidney,  160,  163. 

Congreve,  William,  65. 

Corbin,  John,  244,  245. 

Coquelin,  Constant,  56. 

Count  of  Monte  Cristo,  The, 
169. 

Craig,  Gordon,  x,  xi,  232,  279. 

Crothers,  Rachel,  77,  78,  80; 
A  Man's  World,  77;  Old 
Lady  31,  77,  78,  87;  Our- 
selves, 77. 

Cyrano  de  Bergerac,  x. 

Daly,  Arnold,  310. 

Daly,  Augustin,  243,  245,  263, 

264,  265. 

D'Annunzio,  Gabriele,  xi,  275. 
Dante   Alighieri,  97,    102,    110, 

195,     198;     Divine     Comedy, 

195;  Purgatory,  97. 
Dark  Flower,  The,  9. 
Darling  of  the  Gods,  The,  218. 
Davies,  Hubert  Henry,  151,  153, 

305;   The   Mollusc,    151,   302, 

305. 
Davis,    Owen,    272;    Chinatown 

Charlie,  273. 

Deacon  Brodie,  161,  162,  163. 
Dennery,     Adolphe,     57;     Don 

Cesar  de  Bazan,  57. 
Deslys,  Gaby,  318. 
Dillingham,  Charles,  232. 


INDEX 


333 


Dionysus,  Theatre  of,  202,  239. 

Ditrichstein,  Leo,  28. 

Divine  Comedy,  195. 

Divine  Gift,  The,  324. 

Dobson,  Austin,  96,  99. 

Doll's  House,  A,  41. 

Don,  151,  305,  324. 

Donatello,  93. 

Don  Cesar  de  Bazan,  57. 

Don  Juan,  95. 

Donnay,  Maurice,  275. 

Drama  League  of  America, 
The,  277,  326. 

Drama  Society,  The,  244. 

Dreamer's  Tales,  A,  175. 

Dream  Play,  The,  x. 

Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde,  171. 

Dryden,  Helen,  232. 

Dumas,  Alexandre,  fits,  47,  143. 

Dumas,  Alexandre,  pere,  143; 
The  Count  of  Monte  Cristo, 
169. 

Dunsany,  Edward  John  More- 
ton  Drax,  Lord,  175,  176, 
177,  178,  179,  180,  181,  182, 
186,  189,  190,  191,  193,  194, 
195,  196;  A  Dreamer's  Tales, 
175;  A  Night  at  an  Inn,  176, 
191,  192,  196;  Five  Plays, 
175;  King  Argimenes  and  the 
Unknown  Warrior,  179,  180, 
181;  The  Book  of  Wonder, 
175;  The  Oods  of  Pegana, 
175;  The  Gods  of  the  Moun- 
tain, 176,  179,  182,  187,  191, 
192;  The  Golden  Doom,  188, 
196;  The  Glittering  Gate,  175, 
180;  The  Lost  Silk  Hat,  189; 
The  Sword  of  Welleran,  175; 
The  Tents  of  the  Arabs,  190; 
The  Queen's  Enemies,  192; 
Time  and  the  Gods,  175. 

Duse,  Eleanora,  90. 

Easiest  Way,  The,  305. 
Eaton,    Walter    Prichard,    67, 

269,  270. 

Echegaray,  Don  Jose',  275. 
Eldest  Son,  The,  142,  149,  152, 

159. 


Eliot,  George,  27. 

Erlanger,     Abraham     Lincoln, 

232. 

Ervine,  St.  John  G.,  62. 
Etheredge,  Sir  George,  65. 
Euripides,    ix,    195,    202,    203, 

204,  205,  206,  207,  208,  209, 
248;   The  Bacchee,  207;    The 
Trojan     Women,     202,     203, 

205,  206,  208,  209. 

Every  Man  in  His  Humour,  5. 

Fanny's  First  Play,  120,  150. 

Farquhar,  George,  65. 

Fiske,     Minnie     Maddern,     69, 

157. 
Fitch,   Clyde,   48,   68,   70,   305, 

313,    327,    328;    Sapho,    322; 

The  Truth,  48,  71,  305,  327, 

328. 

Five  Plays,  175. 
Fletcher,  John,  ix,  247. 
Ford,  John,  viii. 
Forsslund,  Louise,  78. 
Fortune  Hunter,  The,  72. 
Foundations     of     a     National 

Drama,  The,  316. 
France,  Anatole,  216,  292;  The 

Man   Who  Married  a  Dumb 

Wife,  x,  216,  231. 
Francis,  John  Oswald,  61,   62, 

296;   Change,  60,  61,  62,  63, 

296. 

Franklin,  Benjamin,  73. 
Frohman,  Charles,  44. 
Frohman,  Daniel,  264. 
Fugitive,    The,    142,    152,    153, 

157,  158,  159. 

Gainsborough,  Thomas,  130. 

Gale,  Mrs.  Lyman,  284. 

Galsworthy,  John,  9,  62,  117, 
121,  125,  141,  142,  143,  144, 
145,  146,  147,  148,  149,  151, 
152,  153,  154,  155,  156,  157, 

158,  159,  239,  244,  246,  270, 
275,  305,  318;  Joy,  142,  143; 
Justice,    142,    143,    145,    146, 
147,    148,    149;    Strife,    142, 
144,  156;  The  Dark  Flower, 


334 


INDEX 


9;  The  Eldest  Son,  142,  149, 

152,   159;   The  Fugitive,   142, 

152,  153,  157,  158,  159;  The 

Mob,  142;  The  Pigeon,  4,  5, 

142,  154,  239,  322;  The  Silver 

Box,  142,  143,  305. 
Garden  of  Paradise,  The,  221, 

222. 
Gates,  Eleanor,  305,  321;   The 

Poor   Little   Rich    Girl,   305, 

321. 

Gay  Lord  Quex,  The,  305. 
General  John  Regan,  6. 
George,  Grace,  69,  303,  304. 
Get-Rich-Quick       Walling  ford, 

72,  299,  318. 
Getting  Married,  111,  124,  125, 

126. 

Ghosts,  41,  310. 
Gillette,  William,  295. 
Giorgione,  89. 

Glittering  Gate,  The,  175,  180. 
Gods  of  Pegana,  The,  175. 
Gods    of    the    Mountain,    The, 

176,  179,  182,  187,  191,  192. 
Goethe,  Johann  Wolfgang,  von 

102. 

Golden  Doom,  The,  188,  196. 
Goldsmith,  Oliver,  65. 
Golovine,  231. 
Goodman,  Jules  Eckert,  36,  168, 

169,  170;  The  Man  Who  Came 

Back,    36;    Treasure    Island, 

160,  168,  171. 
Gosse,  Edmund,  161. 
Gossip  on  Romance,  A,  173. 
Governor's  Lady,  The,  218. 
Great  Adventure,  The,  1,  4,  5. 
Great  Divide,  The,  71. 
Gregory,  Lady  Augusta,  3,  297, 

318,     319;     The     Workhouse 

Ward,  3,  5. 

Greuze,  Jean-Baptiste,   130. 
GuUbert,  Yvette,  87,  89,  92,  93. 

Hackett,  James  K.,  232. 
Hamlet,  5,  40,  43,  53,  54,  55,  95, 

126,  220,  221,  248,  322. 
Hannay,    Canon,    see    "  George 

A.  Birmingham." 


Harrison,  Bertram,  285. 

Harte,  Bret,  293. 

Hastings,  Basil  Macdonald,  44; 

The  New  Sin,  44. 
Hauptmann,  Gerhardt,  viii,  49, 

140,  252,  275;  The   Weavers, 

x,   49,   140,   252,  253. 
Hawthorne,      Nathaniel,      293, 

294,  295;  The  Scarlet  Letter, 
294. 

Uedda  Gabler,  x,  47,  49,  50, 
242. 

Heijermans,  Hermann,  275. 

Henderson,  Archibald,  118,  119, 
125;  The  Changing  Drama, 
118. 

Henderson,  William  Penhallow, 
232. 

Henley,  Edward  John,  162. 

Henley,  William  Ernest,  161, 
162,  163,  165,  166,  167;  Ad- 
miral Guinea,  161,  162,  163; 
Beau  Austin,  161,  162;  Dea- 
con Brodie,  116,  162,  163; 
Macaire,  162,  163. 

Henslowe,  Philip,  x. 

Hervieu,  Paul,  275,  292. 

Heywood,  Thomas,  249;  A 
Woman  Killed  with  Kind- 
ness, 250. 

Hindle  Wakes,  x,  20,  149,  151, 
152,  295,  296,  302,  305,  320. 

Hit-the-Trail  Holliday,  72, 
299. 

Hopkins,  Arthur,  232,  264,  291. 

Hopkins,  Charles,  168,  169. 

Horniman,  Miss,  297,  298,  318, 
319. 

Houghton,  Stanley,  xi,  20,  62, 
149,  151,  152,  153,  159,  296, 
297,  305,  319,  320;  Hindle 
Wakes,  x,  20,  149,  151,  152, 

295,  296,  302,  305,  320. 
Housman,    Laurence,    98,    99; 

Prunella,  89,  99. 
Howard,  Bronson,  68. 
Howells,  William  Dean,  292. 
Hugo,    Victor,   57;    Ruy    Bias, 

57. 
Hume,  Sam,  189,  190,  231,  232. 


INDEX 


335 


Ibsen,  Henrik,  15,  41,  47,  88, 
101,  143,  188,  214,  215,  233, 
237,  242,  275,  277,  310,  327; 
A  Doll's  House,  41;  Ghosts, 
41,  310;  Hedda  Oabler,  x,  47, 
49,  50,  242;  The  Master 
Builder,  188. 

Iris,  111,  120,  152,  153,  158. 

Irving,  Sir  Henry,  160,  243,  316. 

Israel,  44. 

It  Pays  to  Advertise,  72. 

Ives,  Simon,  222. 

James,   Henry,  250,  293. 

James,  William,  44. 

Jenkin,   Fleeming,   166. 

Jones,  Henry  Arthur,  66,  110, 
111,  112,  117,  120,  121,  125, 
150,  151,  152,  153,  154,  155, 
156,  167,  236,  275,  305,  316, 
319,  324;  Lydia  Gilmore,  112; 
Michael  and  His  Lost  Angel, 
111,  151,  302;  Mrs.  Dane's 
Defence,  121,  300,  305;  The 
Divine  Gift,  324;  The  Foun- 
dations of  a  National  Drama, 
316;  The  Liars,  111,  120;  The 
Silver  King,  167. 

Jones,  Inigo,  221,  222. 

Jones,  Robert  Edmond,  231, 
232. 

Jonson,  Ben,  213,  214,  220; 
Bartholomew  Fair,  213; 
Every  Man  in  His  Humour,  5. 

Joy,   142,    143. 

Justice,  142,  143,  145,  146,  147, 
148,  149. 

Kean,  Edmund,  316. 

Keats,  John,  61,  88,  93,  103, 
109,  178;  Ode  on  a  Grecian 
Urn,  61. 

Kemble,  John  Philip,  316. 

Kidnapped,  173,  174. 

Kindling,  71. 

King  Argimenes  and  the  Un- 
known Warrior,  179,  180,  181. 

King  Lear,  83. 

Kipling,  Rudyard,  170. 


Kiss  for  Cinderella,  A,  125,  126, 

129,  137. 
Knoblock,  Edward,  219;  Marie- 

Odile,  219. 
Kremer,  Theodore,  273;  Bertha, 

the  Sewing-Machine  Girl,  273. 

Lamb,  Charles,  65. 
Lang,  Andrew,  168,  170. 
Lawes,  William,  222. 
Legend  of  Leonora,  The,  44. 
Leonardo  da  Vinci,  130. 
Lewisohn,   Adolph,  202. 
Lewisohn,  Alice,  283. 
(Lewisohn,  Irene,  283. 
Lewisohn,    Ludwig,    117,    118, 

119,  121,  124,  125,  151,  152; 

The  Modern  Drama,  117,  151. 
Liars,   The,    111,    120. 
Libbey,  Laura  Jean,  29. 
Lincoln,  Abraham,  272. 
Lippi,  Filipino,  97. 
London   Assurance,   66. 
Lope  de  Vega,  143. 
Lost  Silk  Hat,  The,  189. 
Lucian,  124. 
Lydia  Gilmore,  112. 
Lyman,  Edward  H.  R.,  285. 

Macaire,  162,  163. 

Macbeth,  95. 

MacDonald,  Zillah  K.,  172. 

Mackaye,  Percy,  75,  273;  The 
Scarecrow,  71. 

Macready,  William  Charles,  139, 
316. 

Madras  House,  The,  x,  4,  5,  42, 
121. 

Maeterlinck,  Maurice,  viii,  xi, 
99,  194,  195,  197,  198,  199, 
214,  215,  275;  Aglavaine  and 
Selysette,  198,  200;  Monna 
Vanna,  198;  Sister  Beatrice, 
99;  The  Blue  Bird,  x,  197. 

Magic,  102,  103,  105. 

Man  and  Superman,  112,  302, 
305. 

Mansfield,  Richard,  171,  317. 

Man's  World,  A,  77. 


336 


INDEX 


Man  Who  Came  Back,  The,  36. 
Man    Who    Married    a    Dumb 

Wife,  The,  x,  216,  231. 
Marcin,  Max,  33,  102;  Cheating 

Cheaters,  33,  270. 
Marie-Odile,  219. 
Markheim,  172. 
Marlowe,  Christopher,  x. 
Master  Builder,  The,  188. 
Master  of  Ballantrae,  The,  174. 
Matthews,  Brander,  116. 
Maupassant,  Guy  de,  42. 
McCallum,  George  B.,  285. 
McQuinn,  Robert,  231,  232. 
Megrue,    Roi   Cooper,   32,    102, 

250;  It  Pays  to  Advertise,  72; 

Under  Cover,  32,  34,  35,  250. 
Memories  and  Portraits,  166. 
Merchant  of  Venice,  The,  4,  5, 

56,  220,  221. 
Meredith,  George,  250. 
Michael   and   His   Lost   Angel, 

111,  151,  302. 
Michelangelo,  118. 
Mid-Channel,  83,  111,  302,  324. 
Milton,  John,  96,   109. 
Misalliance,    112. 
Misanthrope,  Le,  249. 
Mitchell,     Langdon,     68;     The 

New  York  Idea,  68,  69. 
Mob,  The,  142. 

Modern  Drama,  The,  117,  151. 
Moderwell,   Hiram   Kelly,   224; 

The  Theatre  of  To-Day,  224. 
Modjeska,  Helena,  90. 
Moffat,    Graham,    296;    Bunty 

Pulls  the  Strings,  296. 
Moliere,  Jean-Baptiste  Poquelin 

de,  viii,  ix,  43,  65,   124,   143, 

234,   248,   249,   275,   276;   Le 

Misanthrope,  249. 
Mollusc,  The,  151,  302,  305. 
Molnar,  Ferenc,  28;  The  Phan- 
tom Rival,  27,  28,  219. 
Monna    Vanna,    198. 
Montgomery,       James,       270; 

Ready  Money,  72. 
Mordkin,  108. 
Morris  Dance,  The,  172. 
Mozart,    93. 


Mrs.  Dane's  Defence,  121,  300, 

305. 

Mrs.  Leffingwell's  Boots,  42. 
Much  Ado  About  Nothing,  55. 
Murray,  Gilbert,  202,  205,  209. 
Musset,  Alfred  de,  98;  A  Quoi 

Revent  les  Jeunes  Filles,  98. 

Neighborhood    Playhouse,    191, 

192,  227,  283. 
Newman,  John  Henry,  Cardinal, 

165. 

New  Sin,  The,  44. 
New  York  Idea,  The,  68,  69. 
Night  at  an  Inn,  A,  176,   191, 

192,  196. 

Nijinsky,  108,  263. 
Noyes,  Alfred,  26. 

Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn,  61. 
(Edipus  the  King,  240. 
Old  Lady  31,  77,  78,  87. 
On  Trial,  9,  19,  20,  22,  23,  31. 
Othello,  18,  95,  249. 
Ourselves,  77. 

Pater,  Walter,  165. 

Payne,  B.  Iden,  189. 

Peg  o'  My  Heart,  20,  249,  322. 

Pendennis,  9. 

Penny  Plain  and  Twopence 
Colored,  A,  166. 

Perugino,  273. 

Peter  Pan,   118,   122. 

Phantom  Rival,  The,  27,  28, 
219. 

Pierrot  the  Prodigal,  266,  267, 
268,  269,  270. 

Pigeon,  The,  4,  5,  142,  154,  239, 
372. 

Pinero,  Sir  Arthur  Wing,  viii, 
xi,  10,  20,  44,  46,  83,  85,  86, 
110,  111,  112,  115,  117,  120, 
121,  125,  138,  139,  140,  141, 
143,  145,  146,  148,  150,  151, 
152,  153,  154,  155,  156,  157, 
163,  164,  165,  166,  173,  215, 
246,  275,  302,  305;  A  Wife 
Without  a  Smile,  112,  142; 
7m,  111,  120,  152,  153,  158; 


INDEX 


337 


Mid-Channel,  83,  111,  302, 
324;  Preserving  Mr.  Panmure, 
44;  Robert  Louis  Stevenson: 
The  Dramatist,  46,  138,  163; 
Sweet  Lavender.  84,  85;  The 
Big  Drum,  44;  The  Gay  Lord 
Quex,  305;  The  Profligate, 
44;  The  Second  Mrs.  Tan- 
queray,  84,  111,  113,  121, 
142,  151,  300,  302,  305;  The 
Thunderbolt,  x,  10,  20,  83, 
111,  143,  242,  270. 

Platt,  Livingston,  231,  232,  284. 

Plautus,  234. 

Play-Making,  2. 

Poe,  Edgar  Allan,  180,  190, 
193;  The  Cask  of  Amontil- 
lado, 193. 

Poor  Little  Rich  Girl,  The, 
27,  305,  321. 

Pope,  Alexander,  108. 

Portmanteau  Theatre,  183,  291. 

Preserving  Mr.  Panmure,  44. 

Prince  Otto,  172. 

Profligate,  The,  44. 

Prunella,  98,  99. 

Purgatory,  97. 

Pygmalion,  114,  124. 

Queen's  Enemies,  The,  192. 

Rabelais,  Francois,  216. 
Raphael,  61,  98,  152. 
Ready  Money,  72. 
Red  Robe,  The,  x,  49. 
Reinhardt,   Max,   xi,    231,   232. 
Reizenstein,  Elmer  L.,  9,  19,  22, 

23,  24,  31 ;  On  Trial,  9,  19,  20, 

22   23    31 

Rembrandt,  61,  86,  87,  327. 
Return  of  Peter  Grimm,  The, 

218. 

Reynolds,  Sir  Joshua,   130. 
Richard  111,  171. 
Riders  to  the  Sea,  191,  196. 
Robert    Louis    Stevenson:    The 

Dramatist,    46,    138,    163. 
Romance,  10. 
Romanesques,  Les,  99. 


Romeo  and  Juliet,  40,  47,  83, 
241,  243. 

Rosedale,  248. 

Rose,  Edward  E.,  172. 

Rosmemholm,   15. 

Rossetti,  Christina  Georgina,  13. 

Rossetti,  Dante  Gabriel,  154. 

Rostand,  Edmond,  55,  56,  99, 
102,  275;  Chantecler,  x; 
Cyrano  de  Bergerac,  x; 
L'Aiglon,  55,  56;  Les  Ro- 
manesques, 99. 

Ruskin,   John,    165. 

Rutherford  and  Son,  296. 

Ruy  Bias,  57. 

Sapho,  327. 

Sarcey,   Francisque,   56,   157. 

Sardou,  Victorien,  47,  48. 

Savonarola,  Girolamo,  271. 

Scarecrow,  The,  71. 

Scarlet  Letter,  The,  294. 

Schnitzler,  Arthur,  275. 

School  for  Scandal,  The,  57, 
249. 

Scribe,  Eugene,  14,  15,  16,  18, 
139. 

Qecond  Mrs.  Tanqueray,  The,  84, 
111,  113,  121,  142,  151,  300, 
302,  305. 

Secret,  The,  16,  17,  19. 

Seven  Keys  to  Baldpate,  31, 
75,  318. 

Shakespeare,  William,  viii,  ix, 
4,  18,  40,  43,  54,  95,  101,  143, 
187,  206,  207,  213,  214,  215, 
218,  220,  221,  229,  233,  234, 
237,  238,  240,  241,  242,  243, 
244,  245,  246,  247,  248,  275, 
276,  284;  As  You  Like  It,  4, 
43;  Hamlet,  5,  40,  43,  53,  54, 

55,  95,  126,  220,  221,  248,  322; 
King  Lear,  83;  Macbeth,  95; 
Much    Ado    About    Nothing, 
55;     Othello,     18,     95,     249; 
Richard  III,  171;  Romeo  and 
Juliet,  40,  47,   83,   241,   243; 
The  Merchant  of  Venice,  4,  5, 

56,  220,   221;    The    Tempest, 
244,  245,  246. 


338 


INDEX 


Shaw,  George  Bernard,  xi,  110, 
111,  112,  113,  114,  115,  117, 
119,  120,  121,  122,  123,  124, 
125,  126,  151,  153,  216,  217, 
246,  275,  305,  310,  319; 
Androcles  and  the  Lion,  216, 
231;  Candida,  111,  113,  114, 
119,  151,  300,  305,  309,  310; 
Fanny's  First  Play,  120, 
150;  Getting  Married,  111, 
124,  125,  126;  Man  and 
Superman,  112,  302,  305; 
Misalliance,  112;  Pygmalion, 
114,  124;  You  Never  Can 
Tell,  120. 

Bhaw,  Mary,  310. 

Sheldon,  Edward,  10;  Romance, 
10;  The  Garden  of  Paradise, 
221  222. 

Shelley,  Percy  Bysshe,  178,  197. 

Sheridan,  Richard  Brinsley,  65, 
234;  The  School  for  Scandal, 
57,  249. 

Shirley,  James,  x,  221,  222; 
The  Traitor,  222,  223;  The 
Triumph  of  Peace,  221,  222, 
223. 

Siddons,   Sarah,   316. 

Silver  Box,  The,  142,  143,  305. 

Silver  King,  The,  167. 

Sister  Beatrice,  99. 

Skinner,  Otis,  172. 

Smith,  Winchell,  290;  The 
Boomerang,  81,  82,  85,  227, 
228;  Turn  to  the  Right!,  226, 
267. 

Sophocles,  viii,  ix,  15,  194,  195, 
234,  240;  (Edipus  the  King, 
240. 

Sowerby,  Githa,  62,  296;  Ruth- 
erford and  Son,  296. 

Steele,  Sir   Richard,  65. 

Stevenson,  Robert  Louis,  43, 46, 
105,  138,  139,  141,  160,  161, 
162,  163,  165,  166,  167,  169, 
170,  171,  173,  174,  197,  250; 
Admiral  Guinea,  161,  162, 
163;  A  Gossip  on  Romance, 
173;  A  Penny  Plain  and  Two- 
pence Colored,  166;  Beau 


Austin,  161,  162;  Deacon 
Brodie,  161,  162,  163;  Dr. 
Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde,  171; 
Kidnapped,  173,  174;  Ma- 
caire,  162,  163;  Markheim, 
172;  Memories  and  Portraits, 
166;  Prince  Otto,  172;  The 
Hanging  Judge,  161;  The 
Master  of  Ballantrae,  174; 
The  Wrecker,  173;  The 
Wrong  Box,  172;  Treasure 
Island,  160,  168,  171,  173. 

Stevenson,  Mrs.  Robert  Louis, 
161;  The  Hanging  Judge, 
161. 

Stratton-Porter,  Gene,  250. 

Strong,  Austin,  182. 

Strindberg,  August,  275;  The 
Dream  Play,  x. 

Sudermann,  Herman,  xi,  275. 

Sullivan,  T.  Russell,  171,  172; 
Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde, 
171. 

Sumurun,  x,  231. 

Sweet  Lavender,  84,  85. 

Swinburne,  Algernon  Charles, 
209. 

Sword  of   Welleran,   The,   175. 

Synge,  John  Millington,  xi, 
191,  194,  196,  275,  319; 
Riders  to  the  Sea,  191,  196. 

Tchekoff,  Anton,  275;  The 
Cherry  Orchard,  x. 

Tempest,    The,    244,    245,    246. 

Tennyson,  Alfred,  Lord,  109, 
110. 

Tents  of  the  Arabs,  The,  190. 

Thackeray,  William  Makepeace, 
10;  Pendennis,  9. 

Theatre  of  To-Day,  The,  224. 

Thomas,  Augustus,  42,  70,  103, 
293,  305,  314;  Mrs.  Leffing- 
well's  Boots,  42;  The  Witch- 
ing Hour,  71,  305. 

Thucydides,  205. 

Thunderbolt,  The,  x,  10,  20, 
111,  143,  242,  270. 

Time  and  the  Gods,  175. 

Tintoretto,  95,  98. 


INDEX 


339 


Traitor,  The,  222,  223. 
Treasure  Island,  150,  168,  171, 

173. 
Tree,    Sir    Herbert    Beerbohm, 

161,  243,  245. 
Triumph    of   Peace,    The,   221, 

222    223 
Trojan  Women,  The,  202,  203, 

205,   208,   209. 
Truth,   The,   48,   71,    305,   327, 

328. 

Turn  to   the  Right  I,  266,  267. 
"  Twain,  Mark,"  73,  293. 
Tyler,  George  C,  232. 
Types  of  Tragic  Drama,  116. 

Unchastened  Woman,  The,  49. 
Under  Cover,  32,  34,  35,  250. 
Urban,  Josef,  231,  232. 

Vanbrugh,  Sir  John,  65. 
Veiller,    Bayard,    314;    Within 

the  Law,  20,  248. 
Velasquez,  86. 
Venus  of  Melos,  199,  208. 
Villon,  Francois,  302. 
Voysey   Inheritance,   The,   151. 

Wagner,  Richard,  327. 

Walker,  Stuart,   183. 

Wallack,  Lester,  248;  Rosedale, 
248. 

Walter,  Eugene,  305 ;  The  Easi- 
est Way,  305. 


Washington     Square     Players, 

198,  200,  232,  254,  281,  282, 

284,  286,  291,  310. 
Watt,     Francis,     163;     R.L£., 

163. 
Weavers,  The,  x,  49,  140,  252, 

253. 

Webster,  John,  ix. 
Wharton,  Edith,  292. 
What    Every    Woman    Knows, 

124,   324. 

Whitman,  Walt,  94,  96,  293. 
Wife     Without     a    Smile,    A, 

112,  142. 

Wilde,  Oscar,  66. 
Williams,  John  D.,  264,  291. 
Wind  in  the  Willows,  The,  12. 
Witching  Hour,  The,  71,  305. 
Within  the  Law,  20,  248. 
Woman  Killed  with  Kindness, 

A,  250. 

Wordsworth,  William,  79,  100. 
Workhouse    Ward,    The,    3,    5. 
Wrecker,  The,  173. 
Wright,  Harold  Bell,  50. 
Wrong  Box,  The,   172. 
Wycherley,  William,  65. 

Yeats,  William  Butler,  176,  219. 
Yellow  Jacket,  The,  219. 
You  Never  Can  Tell,  120. 

Ziegfeld,  Florenz,  Jr.,  232. 


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